Underground
by Magdalync
Summary: An enemy from Ranger's black ops past forces him to take Stephanie on the run and underground. Babe.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** This is a story I wrote many years ago. Special thanks to Cara for unearthing a copy of this ancient file when I realized mine had been corrupted.

I'm a nitpicker so I'll be re-editing and tweaking each chapter before I post it. Posts will be at minimum once a week, but I'll try to up that as much as life allows.

* * *

 **UNDERGROUND**

She awoke in a panic, a hot hand clamped tightly over her mouth. Her eyes darting wildly around the moonlit room, she could only make out the shadowed shape of the man crouched over her. She tried desperately to pull the hand away and when that failed, she opened her mouth and sunk her teeth into the salty skin of the intruder's palm.

He jerked and flexed his palm flat, releasing the skin from her teeth, then gripped her jaw hard. "Stop it Stephanie," he hissed in her ear.

The next thing she heard was the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked, but she was confused because the sound came from the other side of the bed. A second later, she heard the same sound coming from right over her head.

On her right, she heard Joe's rusty voice growl, "What the fuck are you doing Manoso?"

Stephanie went utterly still. Ranger was in Joe's house, in Joe's bedroom, and she was pretty sure Ranger was holding a gun on him. She whispered, "What…?"

In a flat voice, Ranger said, "We need to go."

From beside her, Joe ground out, "You've got some balls."

"Shut up, Morelli. This doesn't concern you."

"The fuck it doesn't."

Stephanie slid her arm slowly to the left and found the switch to the bedside lamp. A moment later, the light was on, illuminating a scene that she had imagined only in her worst nightmares. Ranger was squatting next to her side of the bed, arm suspended over her, holding a gun on Joe. He was dressed in black cargos, tight, long-sleeved black t-shirt, his hair slicked and tied back and two small silver hoops in his ears. His dead black eyes were focused intently on the man beside her.

She turned her head slightly to look at Joe. Only the sheet pooling low on his hips shielded his nudity. His hair was mussed, his eyes were hard, and he too, had his arm extended, holding a gun on Ranger.

Neither man looked at her. Nobody spoke. The only sound in the room was Stephanie's panicked breathing shuddering in and out.

Finally Joe said, "You have about five seconds to get the fuck out of my house."

"Or what?"

"I'll put a bullet in your head."

"Be my guest. But don't you think it'll be a little hard to explain to the boys in blue?"

"You're an intruder. You're holding a gun on me. It's justifiable."

"So you don't think it would look a bit suspicious that you killed your girlfriend's lover in your own bedroom?"

Joe winced and then his face slid to blankness again. "She's not your lover."

"You sure about that?"

Stephanie sat up, tugging at the sheet to cover her breasts. Both men's eyes shifted to her. "That's enough." She turned to Joe and said, "Hand me a shirt." Joe ignored her. She turned to Ranger, "What the hell are you doing? Are you insane?"

He rolled his eyes down the outline of her body making sure she was very aware that he knew she was naked beneath the sheet. "Probably. Go take a shower. You have five minutes."

"Take a shower?"

He raised his eyes back to Joe. "You fuck her tonight?"

Joe took the bait. "What do you think?"

Ranger said, "Go take a shower, Stephanie."

"Ranger, if you think I'm going anywhere with you, you're delusional. Put down your gun."

Ranger swore under his breath. "You know what? We don't have time for this shit." He stood, lowered his gun and turned to Stephanie. "Your life is in danger. We need to go underground. Get dressed. Now."

Morelli slowly lowered his gun and said bitterly, "Her life's always in danger."

"Not like this."

"Then we do this by the book."

"Not an option."

"What's that supposed to mean? Whenever she has a stalker-"

Ranger ran a hand over his face and quietly said, "Look, Morelli. I really don't have the time to explain the facts of life to you. This is not some two- bit stalker. This is on me. My enemy."

"Then why the fuck do you need to hide _her_? Hide your own psycho ass. Leave Stephanie the fuck alone."

Ranger leveled a glare at Joe. "Remember Scrog?"

At Joe's impatient nod, Ranger continued. "Scrog wanted Stephanie so that I would come for her and he could kill me. This man isn't looking to kill me. He doesn't even want to kill Steph … for a while at least. He believes it would _break_ me if he abducts my woman, rapes her, tortures her, humiliates her … and keeps her."

Joe bit out, "Would it?"

"Listen, you prick, I'm not worried about me. My concern is for her. You're more worried about your ego than if your girlfriend becomes some indentured fuck-toy?"

Stephanie seemed to shut down. She was starting to hyperventilate and staring at her lap.

"Stephanie. We need to go." She looked up at him as if she just remembered he was in the room.

He tried again. "Please."

Stephanie stood from the bed woodenly, unmindful of her nudity and walked to the dresser to pull out clothes. Ranger's eyes followed her body for a moment before he looked back at Joe. Joe was just buttoning his jeans and caught Ranger watching her.

"Goddamn it, Stephanie." Joe grabbed the sheet off the bed and stormed across the room to drape it around her.

Annoyed, Stephanie tugged at the sheet and said, "Do you really think my being naked is the most important thing at the moment?"

"You're my girlfriend! He shouldn't see you like this!" Then he turned on Ranger. "In case you've forgotten, I'm a cop. I can take care of her."

Ranger raised a brow. "Like you took care of Ramirez? Scrog?"

Joe closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I can take care of her. I _will_ take care of her."

"All due respect Joe, your hands are tied. The police can't do shit with this."

Joe said, "I'm sure that-"

Ranger interrupted, "Are you really sure, Joe? Really? Because if you're wrong, you're sentencing Stephanie to a fate worse than death. You gonna be able to live with that?"

Joe said nothing. He stood there, fists clenched at his sides and glared at Ranger.

Ranger said, "You love her Morelli?"

"Of course I do."

"Then stop thinking of your status as her boyfriend and think about _her_. You know I can take care of her when you can't. You know I can do things that you legally can't or won't do. And though you'd never admit as much to Stephanie, that's the _real_ reason you turn the other cheek and tolerate me in her life and in her bed."

Stephanie hissed, "Ranger! You're not in my bed! Stop this."

Ranger calmly turned to Stephanie, "Do you really think this is the time to split hairs about our sexual status? He's not stupid, Stephanie."

Joe interjected, "I'm going with you."

"Not an option."

"So she's just gonna disappear? I'm supposed to just hand my girlfriend over to some psycho and hope for the best?"

"Better the psycho you know."

"Fuck. And how in the hell do I explain her disappearance?"

"Since I'll be gone too, I'm guessing people will draw their own conclusions."

Joe looked at Ranger with disgust. "Her parents?"

"Stephanie will contact them. They know she's impulsive. Women do crazy things when they're in love."

Joe took a menacing step toward Ranger. "You bastard."

Ranger just shrugged and looked at his watch. "We need to go, Babe."

On autopilot, Stephanie turned and grabbed her bag off Joe's dresser. Ranger placed a hand at the small of her back but she flinched away from his touch. Joe grabbed her arm as they passed and she stopped.

"Cupcake? You're just gonna go with him?"

She furrowed her brow. "Did you not hear what he said?"

"I heard. I just don't know if I can believe him."

"Joe, he's never lied to me. He's always protected me."

Joe looked to Ranger. "I need to know where you're taking her."

"Not possible. You know that."

"Fuck, man. At least let her call me."

Ranger studied Joe for a minute. "Only if it's safe."

Joe nodded once and turned to Stephanie, pulling her into his arms. She burrowed her face into his chest and whispered, "I'm sorry."

He laid a kiss on the top of her head and said, "Not your fault. I love you, Cupcake."

She nodded once and let Ranger guide her through the door.

* * *

A/N: While you wait for the next chapter (and for a change of pace), please check out my other writing by searching **Mrs Middle America blog**.


	2. Chapter 2

No words were exchanged the first hour of the drive. They were traveling dimly lit back roads in a nondescript car in utter silence. Stephanie sat with arms crossed, head tipped back and eyes closed, but fully awake. Ranger was in his zone.

Stephanie squirmed in her seat. She crossed her legs. Then she uncrossed them and tucked her foot up underneath her thigh.

"Problems?"

"I need to pee."

Ranger let out a soft sigh. He checked his rearview mirror before pulling off the desolate two-lane road. When he put the car in park, Stephanie made no move to get out.

"I thought you needed to go."

"Not that bad."

"Stephanie, we're at least twenty miles from the nearest gas station. Even if you could hold it, I'd rather not stop in a public place until we're done driving for the night."

After releasing her seatbelt, Stephanie attempted to open the door but found it locked. She tried the automatic button on the door but nothing happened. She faced front again and said, "Are you going to let me out?"

Ranger released the locks and she stormed out of the car, slinging her purse over her shoulder. When she was about ten yards from the car, she heard Ranger's door open and close. He called out, "That's far enough."

She whipped around. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

"I'm not going to cop a squat this close to the road."

"This road is deserted, Stephanie. Nobody is going to see you."

"You can."

"Nothing I haven't seen before."

"You've never seen me pee!"

"Babe, if you're thinking this is turning me on, you're sadly mistaken."

She glared.

Ranger said nothing else. He just folded his arms across his chest and stared out into the field where she was standing. With a huff, she dug a tissue out of her purse, tossed her bag a few feet away and unsnapped her jeans facing the road. She tugged her pants down and squatted. Once she was able to start relieving herself, she looked up at Ranger and saw that he was watching her pensively. She knew he couldn't really see anything, hunched in the weeds as she was, but this new humiliation added onto current events triggered an unwanted sting of tears behind her eyes. The blessed numbness that had set in while in Joe's bedroom was giving way to fear, panic and anger.

Finished, she hiked up her jeans, grabbed her purse and stormed toward Ranger. He looked like he was about to say something when she swung her purse in an arc aiming for the side of his head. In a voice thick with tears she yelled, "I HATE you!"

He deflected to brunt of the blow, yanked the purse from her hands and tossed it onto the road near the passenger door. She slapped at his chest with both hands, repeating over and over, "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!"

He took the punishment with no more reaction than a clenched jaw. Realizing she was getting no response, she started kicking his shins and pounding on his chest with her fists. His lack of reaction made her furious. She pulled her arm back to slap him across the face. He caught her wrist inches before she connected. "That's enough, Stephanie." His voice was both harsh and controlled.

Panting, she looked into his hard eyes and began struggling to free her wrist. He barked, "Enough!"

She stood there frozen and stunned. He'd never spoken to her that way before. He'd certainly never yelled at her. With a tear rolling down her cheek, she whispered, "How could you say those things to Joe? Why would you let him to believe-"

"I needed to expedite our departure."

"But now he thinks…"

His hand tightened on her wrist. "What Stephanie? He thinks I've kissed you? Touched you? Tasted you? Fucked you?"

Tugging fiercely to get free, she spat, "Stop it!"

He jerked her car door open, put his hand on the top of her head and shoved her in. Once her feet cleared the frame, he tossed in her purse, slammed the door and walked around the back of the car. When he was inside, he restarted the car, checked his mirrors and pulled back onto the road.

Five minutes passed before she spoke again, albeit sullenly. "I thought you were Mr. Morally Right."

"You want to argue morals with me, Babe? I'm not married. You're not married. Consent is implied when your tongue is in my mouth and you're dry humping my thigh. Seems _you_ might have some moral issues, though."

"Fuck you."

"I'll have to pass right now. You smell like Joe."

She turned to face away from him as much as the seatbelt would allow, closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

When she woke again, it was nearly dawn. The car was parked in front of a run down motel complete with a miniscule pool. Ranger had a small black lockbox on his lap and was flipping through various credit cards and IDs.

"What are you doing?"

He didn't look up, just continued flipping through the cards. "Trying to decide who should check into the motel." He pulled out two IDs with identical pictures and waved them in the air. "Should I be Joaquin Martinez or Anton Espinosa today?"

She looked out the passenger side window studying the filthy pool in the twilight. "Is one of them _not_ an asshole?"

He picked an ID and two corresponding credit cards. Then he began flipping through the left side of the lockbox.

"What are you doing _now_?"

"Looking for Anton's bride."

He pulled out a credit card and matching ID and handed them to her. She studied the California driver's license in shock. It was a recent picture of her but not the same as the one on her 'real' driver's license. The card said she was Katherine Anne Espinosa. She snorted in disgust. "We're married."

He flipped the box closed and locked it. "Yes, but apparently Katherine is exceedingly unhappy with her asshole husband."

Leaning across her, he popped the glove compartment open and pulled out handcuffs.

"You've got to be kidding me."

Swiftly grabbing her left wrist, he cuffed her and then attached the other bracelet low on the steering wheel. Then he picked up her bag and dumped the contents on her lap. After examining all the items, he carefully checked the lining of her purse before quickly tossing the items back in.

She knew she should be outraged, but she was so stunned by his behavior, she simply watched passively. "Why did you …that's just …"

"I know you have a handcuff keys on your key ring. I also know you left your keys on Morelli's kitchen counter, next to your cell phone. I need to be sure you don't have an extra key."

"How sweet."

He shoved the lock box under the seat and opened his door. Once out of the car, he slammed the door shut, beeped it locked and walked purposefully toward the office.

Ten minutes later, they were inside a seriously dated motel room. The carpet was an indeterminate shade between brown and orange. The avocado green and orange comforter on the queen-sized bed was circa 1970. There was a small table with two chairs in front of the window and a 32-inch television bolted to the dresser. The room smelled like cigarette smoke.

Ranger dropped their two duffle bags over by the vanity. He then began removing his weapons. When he reached over his head to pull off his shirt, she said, "What the hell are you doing?"

He tossed the shirt on the floor and toed off his boots. "We're taking a shower and then we're going to sleep." Question answered, he released the top snap of his cargos.

"Can't you just undress in bathroom?"

He paused just as he was about to shove his pants down. "I'm not leaving you out here alone."

"What could happen?"

He gave her a withering look. "Stephanie, you have a long history of not following orders and running away. Get undressed and get in the shower."

"No."

He propped a hand against the wall, tipped his head down and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Stephanie. I don't have the time or the inclination to deal with your behavior right now. I'm under a great deal of stress. I need to focus my energy on getting us from point A to point B safely. I don't have it in me at the moment to play the gallant superhero, or to kiss your ass because I've pissed you off. Get the fuck in the shower before I lose my temper."

He turned, peeled off his socks and shucked his pants. He turned back to see that she was undressing, albeit grudgingly. She tossed her clothes on the pile he'd made and walked past him into the bathroom. He reached across her and turned the faucet on. When the temperature was satisfactory, he grabbed her upper arm and tugged her in behind him.

They both washed up with economical motions, only touching when they switched position to utilize the showerhead. Ranger finished before she did. He stepped out of the shower, closing the curtain behind him. When she heard the bathroom door click shut, she slid down the wall, buried her face in her hands and cried silently under the cooling spray.

A/N: Don't forget to check out my blog, Mrs. Middle America, where I also post weekly!


	3. Chapter 3

"Babe, I need to sleep. Please stop moving around."

"I'm sorry," Stephanie said sullenly. "I can't make my mind shut off like you can."

Ranger sighed. "Do you want to talk?"

"Not to the guy I met today."

He was silent so long she thought he had fallen asleep. "Babe. That guy is me."

"So underneath all the trappings, you're really just a psychotic, mercenary jerk?"

"I can be."

"And I'm just seeing this side of you _now_?"

"I guess it was just the perfect storm."

They both laid in silence for a few minutes. At length, Stephanie said, "Can you tell me how this started?"

"I already did."

She sighed loudly. "Ranger, all I heard was enemy, rape, torture, humiliate, kill."

"That's about it."

"Ranger."

"Steph, you know there's not a lot I can tell you."

She snorted. "Well there's a big surprise."

"Steph, it's classified."

"Who am I going to tell? I've lived in the Burg my entire life, I know how to keep my mouth shut." Quietly she added, "Unless you don't trust me."

Even with the curtains drawn, there was a shaft of light coming in and she could see him clearly. He rubbed his face wearily with his right hand. "It happened before I met you, when I was still active duty. There was a mission that went well, for our side. Or so we thought. We found out later that there was significant collateral damage. And that collateral damage just happened to be the women and children of a very powerful man."

Stephanie sucked in some air. "You … please don't tell me you've killed women and children."

He was quiet for a moment. "Steph, things like that happen every day; it's the price of war. And very likely, women and children have lost their lives as a result of some of our missions. But it was never our intent. In this instance, the women and children were left unharmed."

"I thought you said-"

"We left them alone and unprotected."

"But when you said collateral damage, I thought you meant-"

"Christ, Stephanie." He heaved out a deep sigh. "We found out that at some point after we moved on, the women were unable to find protection. The women were raped and tortured repeatedly … in front of their children. Some of the older children were raped, too. Then they slaughtered the women as their children watched. They allegedly sold the surviving children on the black market. Those kids have never been found." His voice was matter of fact, but hollow.

"Who-"

"Does it really matter who, Stephanie?" He closed his eyes and muttered, "Some splinter group came in behind us. We knew nothing of what happened until two years later."

"So why would this man have an agenda against you?"

"I'd received intelligence that he'd already taken care of the splinter group. I guess it took him some time to decide that more retribution was required. In his mind, it was ultimately _our_ group that set off the initial chain of events. He holds me personally responsible for the slaughter and loss of his entire family. I was the team leader."

"But-"

"Stephanie, I can't really blame him. If this happened to my mother, my sisters, my nieces and nephews, my daughter … you … I would stop at nothing to make sure every person responsible suffered in the extreme. But that doesn't mean I can allow anything to happen to you."

"What about your family?"

"They're being moved as we speak. The Martine family too."

"What about my family?"

"I have a team watching over them, but I think they're off his radar. The man thinks I'm a heartless son of a bitch, so I doubt he thinks I'd care one way or the other if my lover's family dies."

"Ranger!"

He clasped her right hand with his left, the short chain on the cuffs rattling between them. "That's not how I feel. That's how he _thinks_ I feel. They're being watched, Babe. I promise."

She turned on her side and touched her forehead to his shoulder. Still clasping his hand, she fell asleep.

They spent the next three nights traveling from dusk until dawn. Always on back roads and from what Stephanie could tell, taking a circuitous route to nowhere. She didn't bother asking him their destination anymore; he wouldn't have told her anyway.

Every morning, as dawn would break, Ranger pulled off at the nearest no-tell motel, cuffed Stephanie to the wheel and booked a room under the name de jour. They showered together in silence, never purposely touching, and then he cuffed their wrists together to sleep.

When she asked why he'd bothered giving her an ID and a credit card, he explained that if she ran from him or they got separated in any other way, he wanted her to have means to take care of herself. She could no longer use her own ID or credit card because they could be traced. Put that way, she felt a small moment of guilt about how nasty she had been to him; but the moment passed quickly.

They checked out before five each evening so that he could rent a new car. She hadn't even considered the possibility that the first car was a rental, but then again, she hadn't thought or spoken in a rational, logical way that first night. He would make some sort of arrangements to have the new rental delivered to the motel they had stayed at that day. The rental car was always a variation of the same theme: non-descript and reliable. Then they'd drop off the old rental at its corresponding chain agency and take a cab back to the motel. Every time it took nearly two hours to go through the process. Every time he would use a different ID. It was exhausting and nerve wracking and Stephanie didn't know how much longer she could live this way.

Talk was very limited. The civilized conversation they'd had three days ago did not open up the floodgates of communication. Ranger kept his own counsel. In the silence, she learned she was beginning to read his moods. If his face was blank, she knew he was planning. If his eyes would narrow very slightly and his jaw clenched, she knew his thoughts were filled with anger. And twice she had seen a deep sadness in his eyes and she wondered if he was regretting her, regretting her existence in his life.

Day four was different. They had only been on the road for a few hours when Ranger pulled off the rural road and onto a long winding drive that was an entrance to a public park. The parking lot was mostly full. There were four high school baseball games going on and the stadium style lights illuminated the park to the level of full daylight. People were wandering around going to and from the restrooms and the concession stands. There was a walking path that encircled the entire park and it appeared to weave in and out of the dense wooded area that surrounded the park on three sides.

He turned off the ignition and sat back, studying his surroundings. After a few minutes, he turned to her and said, "We're going for a romantic moonlit walk. Bring only your purse. Take my hand when you get out of the car."

Ranger exited the car, walked around the back and opened Stephanie's door. He reached down with his left hand and she just stared at it for a moment.

"Stephanie, please," he said softly.

After situating her purse over her shoulder, Stephanie placed her hand in his and he helped her up and out of the car. Ranger leaned across her, slammed the door and beeped it locked. They walked at a leisurely pace across the parking lot and then onto the grass. When they came upon the path, Ranger shifted their hands smoothly so that their fingers were woven.

The path eventually veered off into the woods and the heavy foliage blocked out much of the light from the park. Stephanie slowed her pace, as she became more and more anxious and uncomfortable being in the woods in the dark. Ranger gave a little squeeze to her hand and tugged her closer to his side. A few minutes later, he broke from the path and guided her down a slight incline. The ground was thick with layers of fallen leaves and she slipped several times. Ranger caught her short of falling each and every time asking quietly if she was okay.

When the trees thinned out, Ranger stopped and scanned the area. He whispered, "Please don't ask any questions right now. Just follow me and stay silent. Can you do that for me?"

Confused and tired, she looked up at the topography of his face limned in moonlight, and saw his beautiful, dark eyes staring back at her. Into her. She knew he would do everything in his power to keep her safe. She also knew that no matter how angry she was with him, she would always give Ranger her loyalty and trust. At her affirmative nod, Ranger led her out of the woods.

They carefully picked their way down a low hill. Stephanie was so busy watching her footing, she was shocked when she looked up and saw that they were approaching the back of a sprawling single story brick building. Ranger picked up his pace and guided her to walk behind him. They came to an end of a section of the building where there was a tall wooden fence-like enclosure. He pulled the long gate open, tugged her inside, and then swung it closed behind them. From one of his cargo pockets, he extracted a small LED flashlight and squatted on the ground about twenty feet from her. She smelled something pungent and realized that the enclosure was built around a trash compactor.

Looking back at Ranger, she saw that he held a small pick-like device similar to a crochet hook, only sturdier. He inserted it into a hole she couldn't see in what she could only describe as a manhole cover. Muscles straining, he pried it up, placed his fingers around the edges and slid the cover half off the opening. Then he slithered down into the abyss. She walked warily over to where he had disappeared and squatted down. He was so quiet that she was startled when his head appeared again. Pulling himself out, he sat on the edge of the hole and used his boot to shove the manhole cover almost completely off. He extended a hand to her.

"Ranger?" she whispered.

He shook his head and continued extending his hand. A shudder ran through her. She placed her hand in his and lowered herself to the edge next to him. When he handed her the LED light, she shined it down and saw that there was about a six-foot drop. Letting go of Ranger's hand, she turned and rolled to her belly, letting her legs dangle into the hole. Ranger figured out what she was doing and squatted in front of her, hooked his hands under her armpits and helped her to slowly lower herself into the ground.

When she dropped to the bottom, she could see there was a short tunnel to her right. It appeared to be made of a large cement drainpipe. She heard Ranger shuffling around above her so she got on her hands and knees and crawled a few feet into the tunnel. The musty smell of stagnant air made her feel as if she couldn't breathe. The sound of Ranger pulling the manhole cover over his head echoed throughout the chamber and she waited until she heard him drop heavily to the ground behind her.

He said, "Go about ten more feet and wait." She did as he asked and found herself at a dead end. In front of her was a cross section of foundation and it was as thick as the tunnel was round. Ranger crawled up behind her and dug in his pocket, pulling out his keys. He had a different type of fob in his hand and he aimed it at the wall. The wall did nothing but she did hear a faint 'click'. Ranger curled in on himself to get his feet under him and then extended in front of him. Bracing his hands, he drew his feet back and kicked at the wall with the heels of his boots. A circular section of the wall swung open to the left like a door on hinges. The lines demarking the door from the wall up until now had been invisible to Stephanie.

Ranger squeezed past her and then through the opening, dropping onto the ground on the other side. It was dark behind him. She looked back at Ranger's face and saw that the floor of the room he was in was much lower than the bottom of the tunnel as she was now looking down at him.

She whispered, "Is this the Batcave?"

He raised his hands to lift her down and said under his breath, "Christ, I hope not."

A/N: Time and life permitting, there MIGHT be a second story update this week. In the meantime, there's a new post at my Mrs. Middle America blog! :)


	4. Chapter 4

Ranger set Stephanie gently on the ground beside him. The inside of the door they had just come through had a sturdy handle in the center. Ranger braced his legs apart and used both hands and considerable upper body strength to heave the door shut. A moment later she heard a click and assumed the door had an automatic locking mechanism. Taking the LED light back from Stephanie, Ranger shined it around so that she could see they were in a narrow chamber, the walls of which were cement blocks. It felt eerily tomb-like. She turned and saw that there was another door opposite the one they had just come through. It was made of steel and full sized. He pointed the key-fob again and the second door clicked open. Ranger reached inside and flipped a switch. Turning back to her, he said, "Wait here."

She was about to argue but he was gone, leaving her in the chamber alone. "Wait here?" she whispered to herself. Where the hell was she going to go? And did he really think this … whatever this was had been breached?

Moments later he returned and tugged her through the doorway. She took two steps in and froze. Eyes wide, she looked around the room, not comprehending what she was seeing. They had crawled into what she though was a sewer and now she was standing in … an apartment?

After securing the door behind them, Ranger walked through the front room and disappeared down a short hall, leaving her alone once again. The room was open with a den to the right and a kitchen table and four chairs to the left. She moved into the den area. There was a sofa, chair and coffee table, two end tables and two lamps. Attractive, serviceable, but nothing like the quality of furniture he had in his Haywood apartment. There was a decent sized flat screen TV suspended on the far wall and beneath it was a cabinet that housed a stereo, video games and movies. She turned toward the dining area and realized that two of the walls were actually floor to ceiling built-in locking cabinets. There was a doorway off the dining area, and she moved forward and stepped into a galley kitchen, complete with refrigerator, stove, microwave and sink. So far, the place was actually nicer than her apartment, if you discounted the lack of windows.

From behind her, Ranger said, "I need to make some calls. I'll have to wait until the park closes to get our things and return the car. Just … make yourself comfortable."

She turned around. "What is this place?"

Ranger had been walking away from her and at her question he stopped and turned. "It's a bunker."

"Ranger, this is not a bunker. This is an apartment."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"How did you get everything down here? The refrigerator wouldn't fit through that hole. And the sofa?"

He smiled faintly and said, "There's a queen size bed in the bedroom."

"There's a bedroom?"

"Two bedrooms. One is a makeshift communications center but it has a daybed in case…"

"Julie?"

He nodded.

"Have you ever had to bring her here?"

"No."

"Have you ever brought anyone here?"

"No."

She chewed on her nail. "Where are we?"

"The building above us is a public school."

"You have a bunker under a public school? Are you insane?"

He folded his arms across his chest. "Are you going to ask me that every day?"

"Will the answer ever change?"

She knew she was trying his patience by the set of his jaw and the tightness around his mouth. He said, "If you put a bunker in the middle of nowhere, secure communications are limited if not impossible. And the amenities are rather primitive. No plumbing, no sewer, and no electricity outside a generator. Additionally, there would be no traffic patterns to blend with."

"So…"

He ran his hands through his hair in frustration, pulling out the tie. "Steph, I need to make some calls."

"You said you would explain everything."

Heaving out a sigh, he leaned against the wall and said, "I utilize the school's power, water and sewage system, heat and air conditioning. I have an air filtration system. I can access the Internet by using a booster and piggybacking on the surrounding wireless connections. I have a satellite phone."

"Can you use a satellite phone underground?"

"With an outside aerial."

"So you steal utilities from the school?"

His face went blank again. "I suppose I do when I use the bunker. Steph, it's not like I'm raising a family down here. I have access to what I need to survive for a short period of time. I own property in this district and pay taxes that support the school. I am also an anonymous benefactor who contributed to the building of this school; I am simply getting value for my money."

She frowned. "Do newer schools even have basements?"

"Not generally."

Stephanie said nothing, just leveled a look at Ranger that said she expected him to elaborate.

"This one does. They just don't know it."

"God, Ranger would you stop being so cryptic?"

He nailed her with a glare, indicating he wasn't happy explaining himself. Pushing off the wall, he walked into the den and sat down on the couch. Following him, she took a seat in the adjacent chair.

"The school was built about two years ago. I have other places I can go, but they're not this secure. In the last few years, it became apparent I had a need for something like this. My choices were under factories, office buildings and schools. Office buildings could work, but it would be difficult to set up unnoticed. The only way I could get around that would be to buy a building or have one built. No matter the choice, the most secure is always new construction."

"But you own several buildings."

"Already constructed. And that might be the first place people look. Factories are good, but so many of them run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week in a good economy. Harder to get in and out of unnoticed. In an economy like we have now, factories are either vacant or running at half capacity. That makes any vehicle or person entering and exiting harder to camouflage."

"But a school?"

"Reasonably easy access at night, closed three months in the summer, holiday weeks and weekends."

"I would never think-"

"Exactly."

"How did you pull this off?"

His mouth smiled wryly but it didn't reach his eyes. "I'm close with the contractor."

"If the school has no basement, wouldn't somebody notice this when they poured the foundation?"

"Sure."

"Ranger."

His response was clipped, impatient, and bordering on angry. "Stephanie, anything can be done if you have enough money and know the right people."

He stood, thinking the conversation was over.

"Well you certainly have enough money."

He stiffened. "You'd prefer it if I lived on a cop's salary?"

She rolled her eyes.

He said nothing for a minute. "Is my money an issue for you? Steph, I'm not going to apologize to you for being successful. I'll admit that I've enjoyed the things that come with it: the penthouse, the cars, the clothes, and the lifestyle. But it was never my primary reason for accumulating wealth."

"Then what was your reason?"

He sat back on the couch and looked her at her with flat, black eyes. "Throughout my military career and other … endeavors, I've made a lot of enemies. You know that. Security doesn't come cheap, Stephanie. And I don't just mean my own. There's my family, the Martines, and sometimes even you. Owning multiple safe houses can be pricey. Keeping them safe is even pricier. Having the right _friends_ can cost a pretty penny. I can't afford _not_ to be wealthy. I'd already be dead if I wasn't."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "So you're telling me that you became a business mogul to finance your own safety?"

"And the safety of my loved ones. It certainly wasn't to impress women."

She scoffed, "Like you need to flash your money to get a woman. You could probably get any woman you want."

He stared at her intently. "You would think."

"Why are you telling me these things? You never tell me anything."

"I tell you as much as I can."

"Which is next to nothing."

Ranger leaned forward, elbows on knees and rubbed at his eyes. "I've always offered you as much information as you needed to know at any given point in time."

"I get why you don't divulge the locations of your safe houses, and okay, I'm sure you can't tell me about any of your missions. But I've known you three years. You've always portrayed yourself as a mercenary, Mr. Opportunity, Mr. Anything for a Buck."

"It suited my purposes."

"So why divulge all this top secret information now?"

"What have I divulged? Do you know what city you're in, or state?"

"No. But I know that your bunker is under a school, you pulled some morally gray strings to have it built, you-"

"Babe, if my enemy got a hold of you now, they'd already know the bunker is under a school and I'm sure they could give two shits less how I had it built or how I illegally obtained cable TV, let alone how I got the sofa down here. And unless you plan on telling your fiancé-"

"He's not my fiancé. He's probably not my _anything_ after the stunt you pulled."

He stood up abruptly and stalked over to her chair. Leaning down with his hands braced on the arms, he gritted out, "That stunt I pulled bought me time to keep you safe. Don't think for one minute I enjoyed collecting you from his bed."

"But you didn't have to-"

"Didn't have to what?" he shouted. Stephanie flinched at the booming sound. Lowering his voice a decibel, he continued, "Tell him the truth? Don't you think you owe him at least that? What kind of fucked up relationship do you two have? You're on again; you're off again. Do you two keep a calendar or a scorecard? Do you actually _enjoy_ the dysfunction? I think you do. Hell, you and I were practically dry humping in the alley twelve hours before I pulled my _stunt_. You think that's fair to him?"

"You're the last person who should be giving advice about relationships."

He stood and looked down at her. "You keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better. I prefer to live in reality. Both of our lives have come to a screeching halt because of our non-existent relationship. Seems everyone in the world can see it but you."


	5. Chapter 5

Ranger closed himself in the office leaving Stephanie alone to brood. She couldn't remember a time when there wasn't some sort of tension between them. But it had always been sexual in nature, not this cold, angry wall. Even during the Scrog mess, the sexual tension was there, like a low, steady hum. Underneath that, she had seen bits of affection in his protectiveness and his trust. Now, the connection felt frayed. She wasn't sure who was cutting harder on the line, but it was clear that with one strong tug, the connection would break.

She was anxious to call her parents. Surely by now, her mother had imagined her impregnated with Ranger's Cuban love child. And she needed to call Joe. She wasn't sure what to say to him. What could she say to him? He had told her he loved her before she left, but he'd had several days to sift through what was said in his bedroom, and she was certain their next conversation wouldn't go well.

Thirty minutes had come and gone and she was still sitting in a daze in the chair. Suddenly, Stephanie sucked in a breath as she felt that familiar sharp pain, low in her belly.

"You've got to be kidding me," she muttered to herself. She stood, walked over to the entry area to pick up her purse, then wandered down the hall to find the bathroom. Once found, she switched on the light and closed and locked the door.

The bathroom was spartan. Everything was white, from the tiles on the floor to the bathtub enclosure with a simple clear vinyl shower curtain. After setting her purse on the vanity, she rifled around the contents looking for a tampon. Nothing. She shook the bag out into the sink and started picking through the detritus.

Her eyes caught on her birth control packet and she winced. She always shoved her pills in her purse when she was spending the night at Joe's. Otherwise, she usually left them on her vanity by her toothbrush. She flipped the lid open and saw that she had failed to take them the last several days, thus her period had begun early. Better than the alternative, she supposed.

After dropping the last of the items back in her purse, she rested her hands on the sink. What in the hell was she supposed to do, shred rags? She sighed, opened the door and crossed the hall. Pressing her ear to the door, she could hear the bass of Ranger's low voice, if not the actual words he was saying. She knocked gently as she swung the door open.

This room, too, was spartan. There was a daybed on the left wall and a small dresser opposite the door. Ranger had his desk set up perpendicular to the right wall so that he was facing the entry. His eyes shot up from the computer screen and leveled on her. He continued on with his call as if she wasn't there.

Walking fully inside the room, Stephanie leaned against the wall near the door, arms crossed, and waited patiently for him to complete his call. Ranger's eyes remained on her as a continued his clipped conversation only he switched from speaking English to Spanish.

Minutes later, he wrapped up his call and gave her his full attention. She looked pointedly at the phone and said, "I need to call my parents."

"I already did."

"What?"

"I called and talked to your father."

"And?"

"He pretty much figured out things weren't as they seemed. He doesn't know details, but he trusts me."

"What about my mom?"

"We decided it was in her best interest to believe you ran off with me. No need to worry her unnecessarily."

"You don't think my running off with you would worry her?"

"Not as much as the truth."

Stephanie looked at the floor. "If I thought my reputation in the Burg was bad before…"

"When have you ever cared what other people think of you?"

She shrugged. "I don't, it just…"

"Looks like you ran off in the middle of the night to be with the man you loved?"

She shrugged again, not even sure anymore why she was giving him such a hard time. At length, she said, "I would have liked to talk to my dad."

"I know. But I need to make a lot of calls tonight and by the time I'm done it will be too late. You can call him in the morning."

Eyes still cast downward, she said quietly, "What about Joe?"

He was silent for a beat. "What about him?"

She looked up and saw him staring at her blankly. "You promised I could call him to let him know I'm okay."

"Is that all you want to tell him?"

"Ranger."

He looked away from her and said, "You can call him tomorrow as well." He picked up the phone again but paused in dialing when he realized she was not accepting his dismissal. In a tired tone, he said, "Anything else?"

"Would you stop being such a jerk? I'm sorry you're busy and I'm sorry I've inconvenienced your life, but you just dumped me in the front room of this…" She waved her hands searching for words, " … place and I don't…" She heaved out a sigh and looked down quickly as she felt her eyes burn with tears of frustration. She whispered, "I just got my period. I don't have anything with me."

His face softened fractionally. "And there's no Ella here," he surmised.

Ranger put down the phone and walked around the desk. Grabbing her gently by the arm, he guided her back down the hall and toward the cabinets in the dining room. He methodically began unlocking them one by one.

"The entire left cabinet is food. These are MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat. Just put the pouch in boiling water for two to three minutes or you can use the heater pouches that come with the pack. I have another case in the storage closet off the bedroom if we end up using all these. This shelf is obviously canned goods, those containers hold dried fruits, and that box down there is full of bagged rice. There are boxes of various pastas over there. When I go to get our bags, and return the car, I'll run into the store and get some perishables, but I'm not planning to go out to do it again, so enjoy them while they last."

He closed the cabinets on the left and stepped in front of the ones on the right. "In here I have all sizes and types of batteries, including the ones used in the fob that got us in here and can get you out. I'll give you your fob later. Next to that are light bulbs. The bottom shelf is paper towel, toilet paper and garbage bags. The middle shelf is for medical supplies, including antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, anti-seizure meds—just about everything under the sun. Those books right there are a Physician's Desk Reference and a couple of medical and simple surgical manuals."

Then he pulled out a large Tupperware bin from the bottom and dropped it to the floor. He snapped open the lid, set it to the side and pulled out a box of tampons and made to hand them to her.

Stephanie stood confused for a moment, not taking the box. Ranger lowered his hand. "Problem?"

"Those are … does Julie use that brand?"

"As far as I know, Julie hasn't had her first period yet."

"Then…"

"Steph, as I understand it, a tampon is a tampon when you've got nothing else."

She shook her head. "No. That's my brand."

"Then what's the problem?"

"What else is in that bin?"

He shook his head and dropped the box of tampons. Standing, he indicated she should step forward and see for herself. There was shampoo. Her shampoo. Her conditioner was there too, along with the anti-frizz serum she loved. There were unopened packets of all her preferred cosmetics. Her toothpaste, a new toothbrush; everything that was in her bathroom at home was duplicated in this box.

Her eyes catching on something, she leaned down and pulled out a pharmaceutical sized box of birth control packets. They were her prescription. Looking back up to Ranger, she frowned.

"Why?"

"They prevent pregnancy. Not an ideal condition when you're on the run."

"Presuming anyone is having sex," she said wryly. "I meant, why do you have all this stuff? How do you know everything I use?"

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes for a second as if warding off a headache before dropping his arms and answering. "After Scrog, I knew there would always be the possibility that I would have to put you in a safe house."

"A bunker."

"Whatever. Steph, you have a basket of toiletries under my bathroom sink."

"And you went through it?"

"Yes."

"That's my private stuff."

"It's under my bathroom sink. Jesus Christ, Stephanie, it's not like I went through your diary."

"I don't keep birth control pills under your sink."

"Believe me, I'm very aware of that. You leave them on _your_ bathroom sink, in plain sight, next to your toothbrush."

Ranger had made note of her brand of prescription birth control and had somehow ordered a year's supply, she thought, more than a little stunned.

As though reading her mind, Ranger said, "For the bunker, Stephanie. You're acting like I violated your privacy just for the sake of doing it."

She knew he was right. She couldn't seem to stop herself from being so contrary. Stephanie dropped the pharmaceutical box back into the container and moved to snap the lid back on. She paused and dropped the lid again, then tore off the top of the box and took out a pill pack along with the box of tampons.

She looked back at Ranger to see him watching her intently. "They keep my periods regular and they reduce cramps."

He said nothing, but he reached across her and pulled out a bottle of Motrin and handed it to her.

Hesitantly, she took it from him, then headed toward the bathroom. When she had her hand on the knob, she stopped and said, "How long will we be here?"

"As long as it takes."

Looking over her shoulder at him, she asked, "A week, a month?"

Softly, he said, "As long as it takes."

"Takes to what?"

"You know what."

Leaning her forehead against the doorframe, she said, "You shouldn't have to do this for me."

When he spoke, she realized he was right behind her. "I've done it before. If I have to do it over and over, so be it."

In a whisper, she said, "Why?"

She felt him gently ghost his hand over the back of her hair. She almost didn't hear him say, "You know why."

 **A/N:** There's a new post at my Mrs. Middle America word press blog!


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:** **This is the author's note I should have put on the front end of this story.**

When I wrote this story many years ago, it was purely for the entertainment of myself and my writing group. The first scene came to me, I _had_ to write it out, I was encouraged by my peers to continue. The story was meant to be a character driven, as opposed to action or plot driven. There is some action, there's obviously a plot, but ultimately, the focus was meant to be on character development, and the eventual emotional maturing of the deeply flawed characters JE gave us. You are meant to see their worst (sometimes annoying) flaws, watch them hash out all the crap JE won't ever let them hash out, then see them self-evaluate, get their poop in a group, and become the couple we want them to be. The suspense angle and action are secondary to the emotional development.

If you find the Stephanie I've written annoying … welcome to my world! She's a (perpetually) 30 year- old woman willingly dating the man who publicly humiliated her as a teenager, lunged at her as if intending to physically attack her in book 1, has banged so many women in their hometown he can't remember if he ever banged his own distant cousin, and 'has good luck with sluts'. Stephanie repeatedly shuns the job security of Rangeman and still regularly mooches food and laundry services off her mother. Her character has actually _regressed_ since book 1. She has become someone hard for women like myself to relate to. Which explains why I stopped reading at book 14 and I've erased 13 and 14 from memory. The series ends at 12 for me.

This story is also meant to be angsty, dark, and angry. So be warned, the story doesn't eventually become more upbeat. The focus of the angst does shift, though, and it does have an HEA (happily ever after).

That said, Ranger and Steph should be turning an emotional corner around chapter 8, though I think there are glimpses of the shift in this chapter. There are 16 chapters total in Underground.

Now on with the story!

 **Chapter 6**

She couldn't sleep. Inundated with information, her mind was reeling. Some thoughts obviously connected, others seemingly unconnected but adding to both her burden and confusion.

What was Joe going to say when she spoke to him? She was certain that once he assured himself that she was okay he would do either of two things: he would push the things Ranger said under the rug, along with the myriad of other issues the two of them refused to discuss, or he would confront her head on. Her money was on the former. Joe hadn't even denied that he'd been aware of her and Ranger's relationship and that he had been turning the other cheek. If anything, he seemed pissed that Ranger had brought it out in the open. Which made sense, since that was exactly the way she had felt at that moment as well.

Ranger's words echoed through her head. _What kind of fucked up relationship do you two have?_ She loved Joe. She did. But if she were honest with herself, she had to admit that if she and Joe were meant to be, it wouldn't be this hard. Their differences weren't small ones. Her career, her choice in friends, her lack of interest in marriage and raising children were all huge obstacles between them. And she felt no desire to compromise on any of those issues.

And honestly, she couldn't fault him for having the feelings he did. He was entitled to want the things he wanted. She _could_ fault him for thinking he could badger her into changing herself to be what he wanted. But if she started casting blame, she would have to admit that she had given Joe much less than he deserved to expect from a relationship. Anything she did give Joe, she gave grudgingly. She never asked herself why she viewed their relationship as a tug-of-war. She suspected that part of the answer was that she knew that they weren't a forever couple. The rest of the answer lay with the man down the hall.

Ranger had already returned from his nocturnal errands of grabbing their bags, returning the car and picking up groceries. Before he left, he had given her a tour of what remained of the bunker. The master bedroom held a queen-sized bed, a dresser, and two nightstands with lamps. There was a large walk-in closet that was half filled with clothes. The other half held a small cache of weapons and ammo, a large box of what she presumed were more MREs, and a safe. He had given her the combination to the safe. Inside were more IDs, passports and stacks of cash. There was also a second fob, which he gave to her. He'd pointed out the ceiling of the closet, explaining there was an emergency escape route there. He promised that tomorrow he would go over how to get out of the bunker in an emergency. She had to bite back an incredulous laugh when he'd said that. What constitutes an emergency when your life is already code red?

After seeing the container Ranger had prepared for her, she wasn't surprised to find that the both the dresser and the closet held clothes for her. When she grabbed things to sleep in before taking her shower, she was surprised at the undergarments he had chosen. The panties were simple cotton hipsters and briefs and the bras were just as ordinary, bordering on utilitarian. She would have thought that he would have decked her out in Victoria's Secret or La Perla, but it appeared when it came to outfitting his bunker, sex was the last thing on his mind.

Eventually, Stephanie nodded off and slept fitfully for a few hours. When she awoke again, she could hear the shower running down the hall. Glancing at the clock on the nightstand, she saw that it was after two in the morning. She had no idea if he planned to go to bed, and if he did, if he would sleep with her, or in the office on the daybed. Turning over, she tried valiantly to go back to sleep. It didn't work.

Minutes later, she heard the bedroom door swing open, then shut. Earlier, she'd noticed there was a deadbolt on the inside of the door. Now she heard the pronounced sound of it sliding home. Next came the sounds of a dresser drawer opening and closing, the dropping of his towel and what she assumed was Ranger stepping into boxers.

There was a cool rush of air at her back as he lifted the covers, then the bed dipped as he slid in behind her. Tense, she waited for him to curve his arm around her waist and pull her body into his. The expectation made no sense since they hadn't slept that way any of the previous nights. Her waiting was in vain; he didn't attempt to touch her, didn't come near her, and didn't even ask if she was still awake.

Opening her eyes she saw that the room was very slightly illuminated by a small nightlight that bathed the room in a soft blue glow. She rolled over and looked at Ranger. He was on his back, his far arm tucked behind his head and the one nearest her splayed on his bare stomach. His eyes were open and unseeing.

"Ranger," she whispered.

He blinked and said, "You need to get some sleep."

"We've been sleeping during the day so long, I don't know if I can."

"You need to try."

Another five minutes passed. "Ranger?"

"Mmmm?" He sounded half asleep and mildly annoyed.

"What if they find me?"

"I won't let that happen."

She studied his beautiful profile, and wondered what thoughts he was shielding behind his blank mask. "Ranger … anything could happen. You have to tell me what to expect."

He was silent so long, she thought he wasn't going to answer. Finally, he said, "If it's at all possible, get away. You've done it before. Use your instincts."

"And if I can't get away?"

He huffed out a sigh. "We'll work on some defensive strategies this week."

"What if it doesn't work? What if I can't get away? How do I—tell me how to survive this?"

His eyes shuttered closed as he said, "Babe … I … don't ask me to do this."

"Ranger, if I were anybody else, you would brief me. Give me scenarios. Help me prepare."

"But you're _not_ anybody else."

She stayed silent a few beats, acknowledging that she heard his words and understood them. Then she said softly, "Please, Ranger. I can't go into this blind."

He opened his eyes once more and said to the ceiling, "No two scenarios are ever the same. I've already told you what his plans are. They will try to make you feel isolated from the world, make you believe that no one is looking for you, and even if they are, that you will never be found. Don't listen. As long as I have breath in my body, I will find you. If something happens to me, I have contingency plans. Others will find you. Know it and believe it. Don't ever let go of that.

"Don't show any weakness. If something hurts, it hurts. If you need to yell out or cry, that's okay. That's not weakness. It's a natural response to pain. Just don't beg them to stop. Don't ask for mercy. It will only encourage them to extend the session. At the same time, don't try to be too stoic. They might believe your pain threshold is high and escalate their methods more quickly. Cry; make noise, anything to let them hear you're in pain. Know that they have no intention of killing you. If they kill you, his ultimate plan for revenge has failed. They have no intention of making you a martyr."

He pulled his arm from under his head and rubbed at his face with both hands. "As to rape-" He cut off his words and swallowed audibly. Abruptly, he jackknifed into a sitting position and swung his legs to the floor on his side of the bed. She heard him mutter, " _Fuck_." He was taking deep breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth. She watched his shoulders tense and the muscles in his back dance under his skin as he tried to get his emotions in check, emotions he refused to let her see.

With his back to her, he continued, "If you are already captive and there are no means for escape, don't fight it. It will only make it worse." The words themselves were delivered in low tones, but they came out forced and harsh from his mouth, as though the words were shards of glass, tearing at the walls of his throat. "Rape is an act of power and aggression. He's going to try to assert his power over you … over me. It's an act only the weakest and vilest of men can commit. Remember that none of this is your fault. Go away in your mind if you have to. Try to remember that no matter what he does to you or makes you do, you are not unclean." His deep voice cracked as he said, "You will always be worthy of love."

"Ranger." She reached out to stroke his back with the tips of her fingers. As if she hadn't spoken, he stood from the bed, leaving her hand hanging impotently in the air. In jerky movements, he fumbled the door open and left the room, slamming the door behind him. A few moments later, she startled as she heard an inhuman roar followed by a loud crash from the front room.

Before she realized what she was doing, she jumped off the bed, yanked the door open and ran down the short hall. What she found brought her up short. One of the ceramic lamps from the living room lay in shards against the furthest wall in the dining room. Ranger was on his knees in the center of the joined rooms, hunched over with his face in his hands. He was breathing in and out in deep measured pulls and pushes. She knew that he was attempting to harness the emotions that he'd allowed to go unchecked.

He'd left the room because he didn't want her to see it. In the past, she'd been in awe of Ranger's legendary control. He'd always told her to focus on the goal, to not waste energy on emotions. She felt a strange tightness in her chest at seeing him submit to something larger than himself. He had always been there for her and knew just what she needed to hear to overcome her self-imposed obstacles. She knew that he would hate her seeing him like this, but she couldn't walk away.

Stephanie softly padded over to him and whispered, "Ranger."

His hands dropped and his head jerked up. Her heart nearly broke. Eyes that were red and etched in grief, flared in outrage. Then he angled his head away from her. His voice harsh, he said, "Go."

Ignoring his command, she kneeled before him, raised her hand and threaded her fingers through the long strands of his hair. Her eyes filled with tears as she saw a shudder run the length of his body. Just as she would have pulled her hand away, he let out a sigh of defeat, and then he slowly tipped forward, burying his face in her lap.

He spoke gutturally into her thighs, his words hot gusts of breath against her skin. "I'm sorry, Babe. So sorry. I never meant…"

Hushing him, she brought her head down to gently rest atop his. "Ranger, you have nothing to apologize for."

His hands skimmed up her thighs to her hips, then back down again. He repeated the motion over and over again as if he were trying to soothe her, when she knew he was trying to soothe himself. Softly, he said, "I let you into my life."

Let her into his life? She was another man's girlfriend, or she was before this nightmare happened. She was somewhere between his friend and his lover, but he had never let her get too close.

When she lifted her head, he turned his to the side and she could see that his cheek was damp. Her hands itched to blot his face but she knew he wouldn't want her to acknowledge his moment of weakness. "So you're sorry we're friends?" she asked softly.

His voice was low when he said, "We're more than friends."

"Sorry I let you into my bed?"

"I pushed my way into your bed."

Pressing her lips against the hot skin of his neck, she said, "Because you knew I wanted you there. And you pushed your way back out again so you are not to blame for this."

His hands ceased their repetitive caresses on her thighs for a moment. "I didn't want to go."

"Then…"

He let out a shaky sigh and tipped his face down into her lap again. She resumed stroking his hair and said, "Ranger, I know that you … care for me. I didn't have any idea-" She cut off her words and started again. "You once told me to focus on my goal. That if I gave myself up to unproductive emotion, I couldn't focus on the goal."

He stilled. Turning his head to the side again, he said, "You remember that?"

"I remember ever single word you've ever said to me."

His eyes were directed off to the side but unfocused. He said, "I never thought I wanted a child. But I got one. I didn't mean to love her…"

"But you do."

He nodded. "Babe, I never meant-"

Unconsciously she tensed her hands in his hair making him stop mid-sentence. When she realized what she had done, she murmured a soft apology and began stroking his hair again.

He whispered, "Do you not want to hear me say it or do you not want me to feel it?"

Before she could answer, she heard something she hadn't heard in nearly a week: a phone ringing. Ranger stood stiffly, tugging her up with him. He made his way to the office, Stephanie close on his heels. Reaching across the desk, he snagged up the satellite phone. He didn't respond with a hello, or a 'yo', he just listened intently as he walked around the desk and sat down, booting up his computer.

When he looked up at her, his face was once again blank. He murmured something to the caller, palmed his hand over the receiver and said, "You need to get some sleep."

Stung, she backed out of the doorway and left him alone. Somehow, she made it back to the bedroom and climbed into bed. As she lay there, she wondered if she was strong enough to be loved by Ranger and to love him in return. She now realized that his comment about his lifestyle not lending itself to relationships was actually a massive understatement of epic proportions. Beyond the risks he took in his life, and the risks that had to be taken to be a part of his life, she wondered if she was strong enough to survive the cold and hot of his emotions, the only love he knew how to give. As she drifted off to sleep she realized that it didn't matter if she was strong enough. She already loved him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

She awoke the next morning to the sound of steady pounding from another room. Disoriented, Stephanie sat up and looked around the bedroom. It looked the same as it had the night before, dark and windowless with only the nightlight for illumination. Looking at the clock she saw that it was just after nine in the morning. She turned over and studied the other half of the bed. The blankets had been straightened but Ranger's pillow was bunched up and overlapping the edge of hers, indicating he had come to bed at some point. Perhaps he'd even held her.

Standing from the bed, she made her way out of the room and as she glanced down the hall into the den, she saw that Ranger was running on a treadmill, his back to her. She didn't remember seeing a treadmill anywhere in the bunker last night but clearly he'd had one stashed somewhere, maybe folded up in a closet. She was surprised he didn't hear her when she came out of the bedroom but perhaps he couldn't over the hum of the machine and the steady clip of his feet. She took a moment to watch the graceful form of his body, studying the pronounced contrast between the breadth of his shoulders and the narrowness of his lean waist and hips. His body was gleaming with sweat, which only emphasized each cut and ripple of muscle beneath his caramel skin. When she realized she had been staring at his ass for more than a minute, she shook herself out of her stupor and ducked into the bathroom.

She turned on the light and was surprised to see that Ranger had unpacked her toiletries as well as his own. The sight of their toothbrushes side by side on the counter screamed domesticity. The birth control packet lying innocuously near the toothbrushes spoke of intimacy. She noted a small amount of her cosmetics, as well as his deodorant, shaving cream and razor were on top of the counter. The rest had been put away under the sink.

Tugging back the shower curtain, she reached in and adjusted the water before brushing her teeth. She then took care of other necessities and undressed before stepping under the hot spray. Once her hair was completely saturated with water, she lathered it with shampoo, then rinsed. Then she applied conditioner from root to tip. When she placed the conditioner bottle back on the ledge, she saw that there were two body wash bottles side by side. One was Bulgari and the other was a Japanese cherry blossom scent made by a popular bath and body chain. It was the only item he'd brought for her that wasn't a replica of something she already owned.

Though her first inclination was to go with the familiar; his Bulgari gel, she was intrigued that Ranger might have spent even a moment thinking about what he would like to smell on her skin. Knowing that a person could only smell their own skin initially after applying a scent, she realized that in a way, he had chosen this scent almost exclusively for his benefit.

She opened the cap on the bottle and poured a generous portion into her palm. Then she smoothed it across her arm and closed her eyes as the rich, sensual and decidedly feminine scent permeated the steamy air. Deciding she approved of his choice, she took her time cleaning her body and shaving. When she finished, she rinsed the conditioner out of her hair and turned off the water. It was then that she realized that she had forgotten to grab a bath towel. She remembered seeing a few stacked under the sink along with some washcloths, but she hadn't thought to grab one. Looking up, she saw that Ranger had left his towel from last night to dry on the curtain rod. She tugged it down and held it to her face, nearly moaning at the scent of him clean from the shower. She used the towel to wick the worst of the moisture from her hair, then dried her skin and wrapped the towel around her torso, tucking the end between her breasts.

Stepping out of the shower, she flipped on the exhaust fan and cracked the bathroom door open to help the steam dissipate. Then she rooted around drawers coming up with her hair serum and a comb. Twenty minutes later her hair was still damp but was blessedly tangle free and falling in wet ringlets over her shoulders and down her back. On the sink she saw her brand of deodorant next to a tube of cherry blossom lotion. She applied the deodorant and spent a few minutes slathering the luxuriously thick lotion on every inch of her skin. After nearly a week of nothing but generic hotel soaps and lotions, the two surprise items from Ranger seemed both decadent and heart-wrenchingly thoughtful.

When she stepped through the bathroom door, she nearly collided with Ranger who was walking briskly towards the office. He clasped her shoulders automatically at the same time she laid a hand on his naked chest. They both stood there frozen a moment. She saw that he had an iPod strapped to his massive bicep and ear buds in both ears. She could hear bits of tinny music blasting through the ear buds and she gently tugged one from his left ear and inserted it into her own. It was the end of Bulls on Parade by Rage Against the Machine. She knew he listened to classical music at times and rap at others, depending on his mood. She had no idea his musical taste ran in this direction. When the song faded out, the opening chords to Ain't no Right by Jane's Addiction came on. Ranger had a penchant for angry anti-authority music and she didn't know why she was so surprised. She supposed when the songs were popular he might have been quite the resentful young man.

She smiled softly and looked up at Ranger. His shoulders were rapidly rising and falling, his breathing obviously elevated from running on the treadmill. A few tendrils of his hair had come loose from his low ponytail and they clung damply to the edges of his face. She looked up at his eyes and saw that they were dilated black and feral, making her heart skip a beat. She tugged the ear bud from her ear and took a step in retreat only to watch Ranger take a step forward, backing her into the wall.

Suddenly, her heartbeat increased along with her breathing as though _she_ were the one who had run miles and miles on the treadmill. Looking at her mouth, Ranger pressed himself insistently between her legs. With only the thin barriers of her towel and his loose basketball shorts, she could feel the heat and length of his erection jutting into her abdomen. Why now? They had showered together every single morning when they'd been on the road and he'd never made a move to touch her. As far as she could tell, he barely even looked at her.

He raised his hands and placed them on the wall at either side of her head. His intense focus lifted from her mouth to her eyes and he leaned in until his lips were a breath away from hers. When she unconsciously licked her dry lips, her tongue briefly flicked across his. A groan tore from his chest and he angled his mouth across hers as a hand snaked up the back of her neck and tugged sharply at her hair.

When she moaned into his mouth he thrust his tongue inside brutally. It was erotic and primal and for a moment she stopped thinking and let herself be claimed. Her hands skimmed up the contours of his abdomen, curving over his pectorals, and then gripping so fiercely at his chest, her nails bit into skin. He groaned again and changed the angle of the kiss and thrust his tongue deeper. His other hand fell from the wall. She heard the faint sound of the iPod dropping to the floor and then he clasped her thigh, pulling her leg up to curve around his hip, opening her to him.

As he grasped the full cheek of her bottom, she dropped her head back from the kiss, thudding her head against the wall. He bent at the knees and thrust his fabric-covered cock against her naked sex, dragging a moan from her throat. His lips, tongue and teeth moved to her neck and shoulder as her hips began to sensually undulate in concert to his thrusts. When his hand slid slowly from her ass toward her sex, she jerked and grabbed his wrist.

She gasped out, "Ranger stop … we can't-"

On a growl, he said, "Oh, I think we can."

"I have my period."

"I don't care," he whispered into her neck.

"I do."

He pulled his head back slightly and impaled her with black eyes, the lust still shimmering in them. "Is that the only reason?"

Their eyes locked and both were still very aware of the intimate way they were pressed together, groin-to-groin, sex-to-sex. She looked away first, moving her gaze to a point over his shoulder. "You said I could speak with my father today… and call Joe."

His blank face slammed down. He released his grip on her thigh and took a step back. "Dress in clothes comfortable for exercise. I have about thirty more minutes to my workout. You can call them while I finish. Then we'll work on defensive maneuvers and I want you to run at least a mile on the treadmill." With that, he walked into the office and came back out with the phone. After handing it to her, he turned and went back into the office, effectively dismissing her yet again.

Walking into the master bedroom, Steph dropped her towel and quickly pulled on a bra, panties, a pair of black spandex bike shorts and a t-shirt. Then she sat at the edge of the bed and dialed her parents' house with a shaky finger.

Her mother answered on the third ring.

"Mom? Can I talk to Daddy?"

"Stephanie! Where are you? What have you done? Did you know that Gladys Majeski is telling everybody-"

Stephanie hunched over with her hand on her forehead. "Mom, please stop."

"How could you do this to poor Joseph? He's worried sick about you! I'm not sure he'll ever take you back after you-"

She heard the phone being fumbled and then a long pause. Then she heard a door click shut. Her father's voice came on the line. "How are you doing, Pumpkin?"

Steph let out a shaky breath. "Fine, Dad."

"Manoso taking care of you?"

"Yes."

"Good. Good. Are you in a safe place?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"That's okay, baby. I understand. I don't want you to worry about us. I just want you to take care of yourself."

"Thank you, Daddy." She felt her eyes burn at her father's trust and unflagging support.

Her father cleared his throat. "I think you should call Joe, sweetheart."

"Does he know that you…"

"Pumpkin, I don't really know anything, do I? But I think he knows that I'm aware things are not as they seem. He's angry, sweetheart. But I know he's worried too."

"I don't know what to say to him."

Her father was silent for a moment. "Just let him know you're safe."

Stephanie dragged her hand through her hair and nodded. "Okay. I'd better go. I love you Daddy," her voice trailed off with a crack.

"Love you too, Pumpkin." And he disconnected.

She stared down at the phone in her hand and took several deep breaths. Then she dialed Joe's cell phone number, praying it would roll over to voicemail. No such luck.

"Morelli."

"It's me, Joe."

"Cupcake?"

She sighed, "Yeah."

"Are you okay?"

"Yes."

"Where are you?"

"You know I can't tell you that, Joe."

"How much longer are you going to be gone?"

"As long as it takes."

"He hasn't told you anything?"

"Joe, he doesn't talk much. You know that."

"I guess he has better things to do with you than talk."

"Joe."

"I'm sorry. This is … I know this isn't easy for you but you have to know it's hard on me too."

"I know. I'm sorry, Joe."

He let out a weary sigh and she could just picture him looking down at his shoes. "Steph, I know this isn't the time, but…"

"But?"

He stalled as if searching for the right words. "I don't know if we can reconcile after this is all over."

"Reconcile? We've broken up?"

"Shit, Steph. It's all over the 'Burg that you ran off with Manoso in the middle of the night. You've been gone nearly a week. It doesn't look good."

"So you have to break up with me to save your pride?"

"Christ, Steph, if it was about my pride, I would have ended things a long time ago. Maybe the first time I stopped by the bonds office and saw you in the alley with him. Or the times I've driven by your apartment and seen his car parked there at odd hours in the middle of the night. Or maybe when the guys at work rag me about what you must be giving Manoso to get those cars from him."

"He doesn't give me those cars for sex! I've never cheated on you Joe!"

"Have you kissed him while we've been together?"

"Joe."

"Have you? Have you thought about having sex with him? Have you almost had sex with him? Have you thought about why you jump every time he snaps his fingers? Is it because you're just that good of a friend or is there another reason you can't say no to him?"

She wanted to deny it but she couldn't. She'd cheapened their relationship enough. The least she owed him was the dignity of knowing that _he_ was the one who decided to end things.

"I don't know what to say, Joe. I-"

"Steph, there's a reason it's so easy for everyone to believe that you could just run off with Manoso. It's plain as day that the man wants you and has wanted you for a long time."

She said nothing so he continued. "And it's clear to me you have feelings for him. I don't get it, but it's there. I can't do this, Steph. I committed to you a long time ago but the most you've been willing to do is straddle the line, one foot in his world and one foot in mine. I think if you loved me the way I love you, Manoso wouldn't even be a blip on your radar."

"But, Joe-"

"Steph, stop. I love you and I'm worried sick about you. I want you to be safe and I want you to come home. But I just can't do this anymore."

She closed her eyes against her tears and nodded. She hated that it had come to this and she hated that _he_ had to finally make the decision, when she should have come to the same conclusion on her own a long time ago. But what she hated most right now was herself. Joe was a good guy, and she loved him, but the way she had been handling her indecision was unfair, even cruel to Joe.

In a voice thick with tears, she said, "I'm sorry Joe. I do love you."

"I know you do Cupcake. Just not enough."

Steph spent a few minutes staring at the phone and trying to collect herself. When she felt ready, she decided she needed to wash her face and pull her hair back into a ponytail so she headed out of the bedroom intent on going back into the bathroom.

She stopped short when she saw that Ranger was hanging upside down from the office door, feet in some sort of boots suspended from a bar mounted in the upper part of the doorway. He was facing out, into the hallway, but his eyes were closed and he had his ear buds back in. Arms crossed at the wrist over his chest, he was doing slow inverse crunches that made every line, hill and valley of his abdomen stand out like a relief map.

When her eyes dropped to his face again, he was watching her. He swung back slightly like a trapeze artist to get momentum, then swung forward and curled up, grabbing the bar with his hands. Efficiently, he dealt with the buckles

He swung his feet down and lifted the bar out of the brackets that had been screwed into the doorframe, but painted white so they wouldn't be noticeable. Walking into the office, she heard him drop the bar and the boots into the closet and then close the closet door. When he came back out, he had removed both ear buds and the iPod was in his hand.

Studying her face, he said, "Calls not go well?"

She narrowed her eyes at him and pivoted on her heel, heading to the bathroom. After flipping on the bathroom light, she turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on her face. Blindly, she grabbed for the towel she knew was hanging on the wall and was surprised to have Ranger hand it to her. She thanked him quietly. After she blotted her face dry, she replaced the towel and scraped her hair back into submission while trying to ignore the man leaning in the doorway watching her.

"You talk to your dad?"

"Yes."

"Everything okay?"

"Not really, but he told me not to worry about them."

She rooted around in the drawer for an elastic with one hand, while holding her hair back with the other. What she found was a packet of unopened elastics. She let out an aggravated sigh. Ranger leaned in and grabbed the packet from her. He opened it quickly and gave her one.

"And Joe?"

She winced when she tugged her hair too tight. "I don't want to talk about this with you." He said nothing, just stood still, watching her face in the mirror. When she couldn't take his scrutiny any more, she turned to him and said, "I thought you wanted to start training me. Can we get on with it?"

Crossing his arms over his bare chest and leaning against the doorjamb, he said, "It's going to become difficult for you to avoid me in a sixteen hundred square foot bunker, Steph."

"I'm not avoiding you, Ranger, I just don't want to talk about this right now."

"We'll talk about eventually."

She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, insolently mirroring his pose. "I find it ironic that you expect me to just do what you say and lay everything out there for you when you don't do the same for me in return. You won't even tell me what you have planned, a timeline, anything."

He stiffened slightly. "I tell you what you need to know, exactly when I think you need to know it."

She shook her head and stood straight. As she brushed past him she muttered, "Exactly my philosophy."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

A week had passed since they arrived at the bunker and Stephanie felt as if she were slowly going out of her mind. Ranger kept to a regular schedule, rising at five each morning to work out. She became accustomed to waking to his watch alarm and feeling him pull reluctantly away from her body. Afraid to question whether he took her in his arms late at night when he finally came to bed or if he pulled her to him in dreams, she always feigned sleep when he awoke.

Stephanie would wake two hours later and have a bowl of dry cereal and a cup of coffee as Ranger began making calls. Once finished, she would do her mile on the treadmill. Ranger would come out of the office, push the coffee table out of the way and work on defensive maneuvers with her. He trained her patiently and emotionlessly. Each day, he would put her in a different hold and teach her several counter moves to break them. He would put her in the same hold over and over again until she either met with success or was at the verge of tears with her failure. He was always encouraging, but not as a lover or a friend would be. In those moments, he was just her trainer.

After their session, Stephanie showered while Ranger returned to his office where he would hole up for the better part of the day. Feeling so detached from the outside world, Steph would spend the hours up until lunch watching national cable news. There were no local channels so she still had no idea where they were. She wanted to ask Ranger but thought better of it; if he wanted her to know, he'd tell her.

Ranger would join her for lunch and she was so lonely, she would try to engage him in conversation. Questions about how things were going with his due diligence and reconnaissance work were met with noncommittal grunts or silence. If she brought up current events, he would pick up the ball and try to engage her in a discussion, but before long it would become obvious to Stephanie that her knowledge of world events, government policy and history was vastly less significant than Ranger's. She'd muddle her way through the conversation just to bask in human interaction and then eventually let the subject drop.

When lunch was over, Stephanie would go to their room and journal. She had never done it before, never thought she had the time and didn't see the purpose. Now she had all the time in the world. She didn't write about how they got there, that the bunker was under a school, or how Ranger kept in contact with the outside world. Instead she used her journal as a means of self-exploration. She'd written four pages on the differences between loneliness and being alone. As a lark, she wrote lists of pros and cons of being isolated from the outside world. The way her life was, sometimes she thought the world was a safer place when she wasn't actively participating in it. And being cut off from her mother could sometimes be considered a good thing.

She wrote three pages pontificating why she married Dickey Orr. Eight pages were dedicated to the unhealthy patterns of her relationship with Joe Morelli. She also wrote him a letter of apology she was sure he would never see.

Whenever she thought she might write about Ranger, her hand would hover over the page while she tried to formulate the thoughts she wanted to express. Sometimes she wanted to write about all the actions and deeds he had done regarding her over the years that had built this chasm between them. But then she'd think about her own actions toward Ranger and she didn't have the heart to cast blame.

Other times she wanted to write about the unfamiliar feelings that came over her when she really thought about the ways he'd shown his love for her. He was generous with his cars, his money and his time. But looking back, she realized he had told her he loved her many times with only his eyes. His dark eyes were filled with rage and pain when she fell out of Stiva's cabinet and he thought she was dead. She remembered the regret and love she saw in his eyes when he looked at her just before he turned to Scrog. Those same chocolate eyes spoke of fear and longing when he told her, _"I'm not emotionally distanced from you."_

She looked over at the edge of the bed and could picture him there, as he was a week ago, trying to tell her how to respond to a rape. Hunched over, head in his hands while he took deep breaths to forestall either emotion or nausea.

Today she wanted to write him a letter. She decided that if something horrible should happen to her, she wanted him to know unequivocally how she felt. But how do you tell someone that the moment they came into your life, you felt like the world went from black and white to a kaleidoscope of color? How do you tell them that when they are gone for weeks at a time, you feel the weight of their absence settle heavy in your chest to the point that you can't breathe? How do you find the courage to tell them? What if they don't want to know?

"Steph?"

She startled and looked up from where she was sitting on the bed, the open notebook on her lap. Ranger was looking down at her from the doorway, his face blank but his eyes were soft.

"Why are you crying?"

"I—I didn't know I was." Tucking her chin to her chest, she quickly wiped her face.

He slowly walked to the bed and sat down in front of her. Reaching toward her face, he tipped her chin up with his index finger. She tried looking into his eyes, but she couldn't. She felt him studying her while she looked at a point over his shoulder.

"Look at me, Babe."

When she refused to comply, he let out a sigh and dropped his hand. "Is this making you cry?"

She flicked her eyes down when she felt the light pressure of him dragging his fingers back and forth across the open notebook. She knew the page was blank, but that didn't stop her from jerking the notebook into her stomach defensively.

"Babe, I would never invade your privacy like that."

She sniffed and wiped at her face again. Almost inaudibly she said, "I wrote Joe a letter yesterday."

He said nothing but she knew he was watching her, waiting for her to continue.

"He … we're not together anymore and I wanted to apologize to him for dragging things out as long as I did."

Ranger held his silence so she plowed on.

"I wanted to write _you_ a letter."

"Babe?" He took her hand in his, his thumb tracing patterns on her skin. "I'm right here."

Looking down at the contrast of their hands, she whispered, "I wanted to write you a letter just in case."

His thumb stilled. "In case what?"

"In case something happens to me."

"I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

"Then why are you training me?"

He didn't answer.

Pulling her hand from his, she scooted across the bed to lay her journal on the nightstand. When she turned back, Ranger was looking across the room at the notebook. Realizing she was watching him, he returned his focus to her and said, "You've been in here over an hour."

Confused, she said, "I always journal after lunch. Then I take a nap. You know that."

"But you didn't write anything."

"Maybe I already turned the page."

"The cap is still on your pen." He plucked the pen off the quilt and held the evidence in front of her at eye level before tossing it unerringly to land on the notebook.

She maneuvered up the bed toward the center and curled up with Ranger's pillow, her eyes focused on the closet door across from her. "There isn't any way to say what I want to say."

A minute of silence ticked by. Then two. Gracefully, he rose from the end of the bed and toed off his boots, then bent to tug off his socks. Standing straight again, he peeled off his shirt and tossed it on the dresser.

Walking around the bed, he climbed in behind her. He let out a sigh and said, "Can I hold you?"

She nodded once and he wasted no time wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her body into his. Placing a tender kiss on her shoulder, he burrowed his nose into her neck. He whispered, "Thank you."

She realized Ranger had no idea that she knew he held her when she slept. It broke her heart a little to know that he hadn't been holding her because it was just a natural sleeping position for a man and a woman sharing a bed or because he thought she needed to be held. He just wanted to hold her. He _needed_ to hold her. He was afraid she wouldn't let him so he waited until she was asleep.

Stephanie asked, "Do you ever wonder if you'll find true happiness in life?"

He paused only a moment at her strange non-sequitur. "I don't believe true happiness is something anyone experiences as a constant."

"What do you mean?"

"No one lives a life in a state of constant happiness, Steph. That's life."

"Okay."

"You don't have to sound so dejected, Babe. I have happy moments."

"Not whole days? Just moments?"

He thought on that for a while. "I'm sure I had a whole day where I was happy at some point in my life."

She yawned. "Jesus, that's depressing."

"Wait. I have something."

"Can't wait to hear this."

He gave her a brief squeeze and rested his chin on her shoulder. "I was happy the whole day after the shower rod incident."

She elbowed him lightly and said, "Be serious."

"I am. Ask Tank. Ask Lester. I couldn't get the fucking grin off my face the whole day."

"You don't grin."

"I was grinning on the inside. What about you?"

"What do you mean what about me? I don't remember a whole lot of happy going on when Joe was FTA. I'm pretty sure I didn't have a twenty-four-hour span of happiness during that nightmare." She yawned again and nestled her head more deeply into the pillow.

"How about your wedding day?"

"Nope. I wrote a list in my journal of twenty-two things that made me unhappy on my wedding day."

"Should have been your first clue."

"Only seven of them had to do with Dickey. The rest had to do with my mother."

"Hmm."

"Today's been pretty okay so far."

"You were crying when I came in here."

"But I didn't know it so it doesn't count."

They were silent a while and Stephanie began drifting off to sleep.

"Babe?"

"Hmmm."

"Have I ever made you happy?"

Half asleep, she answered, "Mmm-hmm."

"When?"

"Mmm. When you tease me. When you trust me."

"I trust you all the time."

"Mmmm. When you kiss me."

"My kisses make you happy?"

"Mmm-hmm. Sometimes they make me sad."

He leaned up on his elbow, scooped her hair away from her neck and kissed her nape. "Are you awake Stephanie?"

"Hmmm."

"When do my kisses make you sad?"

"When I remember I won't always have them."

When Stephanie came awake, she was disoriented, as usual, and had to look at the clock to get her bearings. It was just after seven in the evening. The room was dark except for the nightlight and the sliver of light coming from the edge of the bedroom door.

She turned in Ranger's arms and looked at his sleeping face. She decided that he had to be exhausted since her movement didn't wake him. After studying him for a minute, she remembered that Ranger had found her journaling and that she had told him about the letter she couldn't write. His letter. And then something else came back to her. Was it a part of a dream, or real?

 _When do my kisses make you sad?_

Had she told him his kisses made her sad? Had she told him that he sometimes made her furious, anxious, scared? Did he know that the entire time she had loved him, her love was always tainted with guilt, insecurity and fear? Here she was, spending days thinking about her mortality and things she'd left unspoken, and she just told him that his kisses made her sad?

She tilted her head, pressed her lips against the warm skin on his neck and whispered, "Ranger."

He stirred and said, "Mmmm?"

"Your kisses make me happy."

He cleared his throat but remained otherwise silent.

"They don't make me sad."

He said nothing, just looked her through hooded eyes.

"I want to be happy."

Ranger studied her and she could see that he was mentally weighing her words. He hesitated a moment, unsure, before leaning forward and brushing his lips across hers. Stephanie let out a shuddering breath. Tunneling her fingers through his hair, she pulled him in and stroked her tongue delicately against his. Ranger groaned and rolled her beneath him. The kiss changed. Up on his elbows, he cradled her head in his hands and poured months and years of his longings and desires into his kiss.

Stephanie ran both hands up and down his muscled back, reveling in the silky texture of his skin and wondering how she had gone so long without this. When she flexed her pelvis against his, he growled into her mouth and the kiss changed again.

The kiss became one of possession and claiming. Her heart and body ached and she knew nothing would soothe those pains until he was inside her. With impatience, she shoved roughly at his pants. A sound between a sigh and a sob broke from her throat when the effort proved unsuccessful.

Without breaking the kiss, Ranger lifted away slightly. He unsnapped, unzipped then pushed off the offending garment. Her hand reached between them and she clasped his length and began to stroke him exactly the way he had taught her to that night so long ago. He broke the kiss and stilled above her, air hissing through his teeth. Her hand drifted down to caress the heavy sac beneath. Grasping her wrist, he pinned it to the mattress, ending her explorations abruptly.

Kneeling up, he patiently tugged off her clothes, distracting himself in the process. Removing her bra, his greedy mouth sucked and toyed at her nipples as though they were a rare delicacy he had long been without. She watched him as he arrowed his tongue around the stiff points until they were glistening, darkened from the attention and hard as diamonds. Drawing one tightened peak into his mouth, he rolled his eyes up to hers, daring her to watch him make love to her.

He rubbed his face back and forth between her breasts and across her torso as if marking his scent onto her skin, his stubble abrasive and electrifying. His impatient fingers hooked into the hips of her panties, dragging them down slowly while his mouth paid homage to her hips, her tummy, her inner thighs and the backs of her knees. He worked his way back up and laved at the hollow where thigh met groin, causing her hips to buck and rock against him. Placing a hand on her abdomen, he pressed down, keeping her still.

Gliding that hand down, he sifted his fingers through her curls and gently parted her. His tongue teased and tasted at her cleft with whisper-like strokes, causing Stephanie to pant and clutch at his head. Steadily, he increased his assault, tonguing, lapping, humming his pleasure at her taste. She begged, shamelessly splaying her legs and pushing herself toward his mouth, tugging at his silky hair, pulling him into her sex. Then he added his fingers, gently at first, until it just wasn't enough. Stephanie rotated her hips, pressed toward his wet face while he tirelessly pumped his fingers into her, suckling on her clit. Without any warning, she dug her heels into his shoulders, grasped roughly at his hair and cried out, shuddering in release.

Still contracting from her climax, she watched as he nibbled and kissed his way up her body and then covered her mouth with his. Her scent, her juices damp on his face aroused her even more, making her moan into his kiss. With his body poised over hers, the crown of his cock gently pressed for entrance.

Stephanie wrapped one long leg around his waist attempting to pull him inside, but he resisted. "Slow, mi corazon. Let me go slow."

Inch by inch he eased himself into her, allowing her body to accommodate him. When he was as deep as he could go, he stilled. He kissed her shoulder, her neck. "I missed you," he sighed.

For a while, his thrusts were agonizingly slow, but exquisite. In her mind's eye she could see the long, sculpted lines of his body gracefully gliding over her as if part of an elegant erotic dance. He was a sensual lover who liked to draw out the pleasure, the tastes, the sounds and the intimacy of lovemaking.

Stephanie dragged her nails up his broad back, and he growled and bit at her neck.

"Please. I need more, give me more," she begged.

He rocked once deeply into her, stilling as his cock kissed the mouth of her womb. "Say my name," he rasped.

She swiveled her hips against his with impatience. She whispered, "Ranger."

He withdrew until only the tip of him was still inside her and gritted out, _"My name."_

Opening her eyes she saw Ranger's face above hers. His hair was loose, partially shrouding his face. She fingered his hair away so she could see him and was stunned by the feral expression in his eyes.

She breathed, "Carlos."

He rammed his length into her, taking her breath away. Finding her hands, he pinned them over her head. Again and again, he withdrew and slammed into her and each time he hit bottom, she gasped and tightened around him.

Ranger slipped his hand between their sweat-slicked bodies and began circling her clit as he continued to pound into her, the sound of skin slapping against skin punctuating each thrust. Between labored breaths, Ranger panted out, "Come, Stephanie. Come for me."

A few moments later, she cried out, her sex tightening around him. Muttering a harsh oath, he thrust one final time and spilled hotly within her.

Ranger rested his forehead against hers as he caught his breath. Stephanie shivered and he loosened his hold on her hands, rolling them to their sides.

With a kiss to her temple he said, "No matter what happens, you have to know that I love you."

Just as she was about to respond, the satellite phone rang, startling Stephanie. With one last light kiss to her lips, Ranger was out of the bed and on his way down the hall.

Stephanie was staring at the ceiling when he returned. He switched on the nightstand lamp.

Blinking against the unwelcome brightness, Steph leaned up on her elbows and said, "What's going on?"

Ranger stepped into the closet for a moment and came out seconds later with a pair of sweats. He tossed them on the foot of the bed.

"Get dressed. We have company."


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

Deciding that a mortal enemy would not have the decency to call ahead and announce his arrival, Stephanie took a moment to step into panties and put on a bra and tank top before pulling on the sweatshirt and sweatpants that Ranger had tossed on the bed. She stood in front of the dresser mirror and groaned at the sight of her hair. It didn't look awful but it definitely had that disheveled, 'just fucked' look. The wide collar of the sweatshirt did little to hide the love bites Ranger had left behind. Her face and neck also showed subtle signs of whisker burn. Shrugging, she turned from the mirror and opened the door.

Peering down the hall, her eyes caught on the man standing in the center of the living area. He was about Ranger's height and build, tan, and he had short, honey-blond hair. He was talking to Ranger in low tones but at the flash of movement, his pale blue eyes cut to Stephanie before focusing back on Ranger. She quickly ducked into the bathroom to clean up and make herself presentable.

When she stepped out, the men were nowhere to be found. She heard their subdued voices coming from the office so she hesitantly made her way to that door. Ranger was sitting in front of his laptop, facing the doorway and the other man was leaning over Ranger's shoulder reading something on the screen with his brow furrowed.

Sensing her presence, Ranger lifted his eyes to Stephanie and sat back in his chair. The man behind him stood upright and impaled her with glacial eyes.

"Stephanie, this is Jase Hawkins. Jase, this is Stephanie Plum," Ranger said.

The man gave off absolutely no warmth, no signs of a soul behind his emotionless eyes. Stephanie gave him a single nod and leaned against the wall near the door. The man acknowledged her nod with a slow blink, then leaned forward again over Ranger's shoulder, returning his attention to the screen.

Stephanie glanced at Ranger and his eyes held something she hadn't seen before. Trepidation? Regret? Before she could decide, Ranger looked back toward his monitor and sighed. He placed his hands at the edge of the desk and pushed back to rise from his seat. Jase took the vacated chair without a word and began working where Ranger left off.

Walking toward Stephanie, Ranger gently grabbed her wrist as he passed by, tugging her out of the room. Stephanie followed along toward the front of the bunker, pulling her wrist from Ranger's grasp as soon as they were out of Jase's eyesight.

Ranger went directly to the food cabinets, opened them and studied the contents. Stephanie stood in the kitchen, arms folded across her chest, leaning against the counter.

Ranger said, "We haven't eaten dinner. Spaghetti?" He reached in and grabbed a box of pasta and a large can of sauce.

"Did you know he was coming?" she asked.

He closed the cabinet and walked into the kitchen, placing the ingredients on the counter. Bending down, he pulled a large pot from under the counter and walked it over to the sink to fill with water. "Yes. But I didn't know exactly when he would arrive."

She watched him work; making note that he was withholding eye contact. "Were you planning on telling me?"

He went to the freezer and examined the contents. Pulling out a package of frozen ground beef, he unwrapped it, placed it on a plate and put it in the microwave to defrost. Once he washed and dried his hands, he turned to Stephanie and said, "I was planning on telling you tonight. I didn't think he would be here until tomorrow or the next day."

Stephanie shook her head in disbelief and pushed past him to the fridge. Grabbing a Coke, she popped it open, took a generous swig and set it down on the counter. "Why is he here?"

Ranger took the thawed beef out of the microwave and dumped the contents of the plate into a pan to brown. Without looking up from the task he said, "I can't leave you here alone."

It was as if the room suddenly became a vacuum. The silence suspended between them made the sizzle and spit of the meat frying sound obscenely loud.

"Where are you going?"

Shaking his head, Ranger added seasonings to the meat and said, "Steph."

"Where are you going," she repeated.

He sighed and turned down the burner. "I have to do my job."

"You have to go back to work?" Her tone was just short of incredulous.

Without looking up he said, "I have to make _our problem_ go away."

Stephanie felt a chill run through her so deep it crept into her bones. "I thought that someone else-"

Ranger dumped the pasta into the boiling water and shook his head. "It's my mess, it's my responsibility."

"So now I'm your mess?"

Closing his eyes for a moment, Ranger said, "You're not my mess, you're my—this is what I need to do."

"So you're just going to leave me here with," she flailed her arms around searching for words, "Mr. Personality?"

"I trust him with my life, and yours."

"Because?"

"Steph, he's the best at what he does."

"Which is?"

"Classified."

Of course it is. "So you're just going to leave me with some psychopath while you go out to play executioner or whatever?"

She saw his back stiffen and wished she could retract her words. In economical movements, Ranger turned off the burner and removed the pan from the heat. Turning to Stephanie with hard eyes, he said, "This is my life. Remember? The one I told you doesn't lend itself to relationships? This is it."

"I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. I didn't mean-"

"No, this is good. We need to talk about this. Maybe while I'm gone you can think about what I have to offer you and what you're willing to live with."

"You don't have to-"

Ranger cut her off. "I can give you cars, clothes, jewelry and houses. I can give you fidelity. A child is a risk, another target for an enemy, but if a child is what you want, I'll give you one. I can't give you total freedom. My enemies are vast and they have long memories. You'd have to deal with constant security and with that, a lack of privacy. At any given moment, you or I could be in danger and would have to go into hiding just like we are now. You'd have to live with the fact that I have blood on my hands that will never come clean. I have no doubt there will be more blood spilled in the future."

Jase strolled in and forked up a strand of spaghetti from the bubbling pot, blew on it a moment, then ate it. He shook his head, determining it wasn't done and said to Ranger, "Is this your spiel where you ask her to go steady? 'Cause I gotta say, you're not making yourself sound very attractive, Carlos."

Ranger ignored Jase and bent to get a colander to drain the ground beef. Jase turned his flat stare to Stephanie and looked her over dispassionately. When his eyes took in the marks on her neck he said to Ranger, "Have you spent _any_ time in the last two weeks productively?"

Turning with the drained beef, Ranger tossed it back in the pan, opened a can of sauce and dumped it in. Nudging Jase away from the stove, he resumed stirring the pasta. "I've been training her."

Jase cocked an eyebrow at Stephanie and said in a bland tone, "To do what?"

His back to the room, Ranger missed the nasty connotation of the question. Stephanie scowled at Jase and said, "Defensive maneuvers."

Eyeing her neck, one side of Jase's mouth quirked up. "You won't mind if I give her an evaluation in the morning?"

Ranger pulled the pot of cooked pasta off the burner and turned to dump the contents into the colander in the sink. He smacked the empty pot down on the counter and turned on Jase. Arching his brow, Ranger said, "An evaluation of her defensive capabilities?"

Jase barely bit back a smirk. "Of course."

"Fine. Just keep in mind we've only been training a week."

"How long has she been in your life?"

Ranger sighed, "Three years."

Jase turned back to Steph. "And how are you getting away with being untrained this long?"

"It's complicated," Steph muttered.

"Shit. How could you be this irresponsible, Carlos?"

Ranger said, "Steph, would you mind setting the table?"

Stephanie's eyes shifted between the two men. She didn't like Jase. He was cocky, arrogant, and while he was very good-looking, his face was completely unreadable. She realized that it was like watching two Rangers stand off against each other, only the white one was bitter and snide.

Stepping between the two men, Steph walked to the appropriate cabinet, pulled down three plates, grabbed some utensils and left the kitchen without saying a word.

They ate in silence. Ranger seemed tense and angry and Jase was giving off annoyed vibes.

Polishing off his last bite, Jase kicked back in his chair and asked, "So what's the plan?"

Ranger paused mid-twirl of his pasta and said, "I need to talk to Stephanie first."

"You haven't told her? Jesus."

Stephanie had to agree there.

Ranger said, "I was going to talk to her tonight. You're early."

"You've been on the run or underground for nearly two weeks. What's the holdup?"

Ranger dropped his fork with a metallic clang and sat back, glaring at Jase. "What the fuck is your problem?"

"My problem is that my principal," nodding to Stephanie, "is untrained, unprepared, and completely oblivious."

Stephanie blurted, "What's a _principal_?"

Jase rolled his eyes and said, "You, sweetheart. You're the principal. My only focus is to keep you alive. My life for yours and all that shit."

Stephanie retorted, "Well that just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy."

Ranger gritted out, "I _said_ I was training her."

Folding his arms across his chest, Jase said, "And I have my doubts you've been doing it effectively."

"Fuck you."

Jase shook his head and made a _tsk-tsk_ sound. "My guess is you coddle her. Carry her around on a tufted pillow. Don't tell her the real deal because you're afraid it will offend her delicate sensibilities."

Stephanie stood from her chair and turned on Jase. "He's been training me just fine, you asshole, and I have the bruises to prove it."

Jase glanced pointedly at her neck. "I can see that."

Spinning away from Jase, Steph stalked toward the hall with intention of going to the bedroom and slamming the door for emphasis. The next thing she knew, she was pinned face-first against the living room wall. Her right arm was twisted up behind her and over two hundred pounds of aggressive male was pressed intimately against her back.

Stephanie whimpered at the sharp pulling pain in her shoulder and then she heard the distinct sound of a gun being cocked from a few feet away.

Ranger growled, "Get the fuck off of her."

Jase squeezed her wrist until it was numb and said, "If you're training her properly, she should be able to get out of the hold."

He ground his pelvis into her bottom, making Stephanie feel sick to her stomach. She choked back a sound of frustration and tugged ineffectively at her trapped wrist.

"Get. Off. Of. Her."

Ignoring Ranger, Jase said, "Come on, chica. Try to get out. Just remember if you wiggle, you might turn me on."

Ranger hissed, "Jase, you fuck, I didn't ask you to come here to terrorize my woman."

Jase blew out a sigh of disgust and stepped back, leaving Stephanie to lean against the wall boneless and clutching her arm. Ranger re-engaged the safety of his gun and tucked it at the small of his back. Moving between Jase and Stephanie, he sent a lightning-quick elbow into Jase's nose and pulled Stephanie into his arms.

When Ranger turned with Stephanie clutched to his chest, Jase was squatting in the middle of the room with his hands to his face. "Fuck, man. That was unnecessary."

"And assaulting Stephanie was necessary?"

Dropping his hands to reveal an already swollen and probably broken nose, Jase swiped at the blood and said, "If it scares her enough to want to learn how to fight, then, yeah."

"She doesn't have to be scared to learn how to fight."

Jase snorted and winced, swiping again at his bloodied nose. "Right. Cause they taught us how to fight in the military with such gentle loving kindness. Shit. If she thinks she's really going to get hurt or raped, she's going to try harder. Fight harder."

Ranger ran his fingers through Steph's curls as she pressed into him. "You're not going to rape her," he said softly.

"No. But I'll hurt her if I have to. If that's what it takes to teach her to defend herself effectively, I'll do it. You can't train her objectively. You don't want to scare her and you're not willing to hurt her."

Ranger said nothing for a moment, but Stephanie assumed he was glaring at Jase. "I asked you here to take care of her."

Jase stood up and walked toward the kitchen. She heard the water run briefly, then drawers opening and ice shuffling in the freezer. He came back to the living room with a wad of paper towel and a zip-lock bag filled with ice against his nose.

Dropping onto the couch, Jase said, "I'll take care of her. I'm just going to do it my way."

"I don't like it."

"You don't have to like it. You need to do your job and let me do mine."

Ranger swore under his breath.

"Man, you know if our roles were reversed, you'd be saying the same shit to me."

Ranger tugged Stephanie with him as he sat in a chair across from the couch. He pulled her onto his lap. Rubbing her arm gently, he placed a kiss on her head and said, "You okay, Babe?"

"Yeah." She wasn't. She really didn't like the man sitting across from them, but surely Ranger wouldn't leave her alone with Jase if he couldn't be trusted.

Jase said, "I don't suppose you've implanted a tracker on her?"

Stephanie stiffened and said, "A what?"

"Jesus Christ, Carlos. Seriously?"


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

Jase stood up and stretched languidly. He crossed in front of Ranger and Stephanie, picked up his gear and then paused behind the chair. "Where am I sleeping?"

Ranger held Stephanie's eyes while answering Jase. "The office."

"I'll leave you to it. I'm gonna run through the shower."

Both Stephanie and Ranger were silent as Jase left the room. Neither spoke as they heard him shuffle around in the office. When they heard the bathroom door close and the shower running, Stephanie stood from her perch on Ranger's lap.

Looking down at Ranger she asked, "What was he talking about?"

Ranger tipped his head back on the chair and closed his eyes. "A subcutaneous biometric tracker."

"And that is…"

"A specialized tracking device that's inserted beneath the skin."

"They exist?"

"Not officially."

"But unofficially?"

He sighed, "They exist."

"And?"

Leaning forward, elbows on knees, he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "I have two in the medical supply bin."

"For Julie and me," she guessed. At Ranger's affirmative nod she dropped to the couch across from him. "What about you?"

He furrowed his brow. "What about me?"

"Do you have one of those—things implanted in you?"

"No."

She let out a hallow laugh. "But _I_ need one?"

"Babe."

"What about me?"

"What about you?"

She let out an aggravated sigh. "What if something happens to _you_?"

"Nothing's going to happen to me."

"Just like nothing's going to happen to me?"

The door to the bathroom opened and Jase stepped out wearing nothing but a pair of black track pants and dog tags. Stephanie caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye. She would have thought he was beautiful if he wasn't such an asshole. She looked back at Ranger and found him watching her.

Jase plopped down on the sofa next to Steph. "So did you kids work things out?"

Steph scooted down the couch to put some space between them. "Where's it go?"

Ranger just held her eyes and didn't answer. Jase looked back and forth between the two. He cleared his throat and said, "The device?" At Stephanie's nod he answered, "Fleshy part of the inside of your upper arm. It's a single rod that resembles a birth control implant. It's not obvious, but when you push down on the skin around it, it can be felt. You don't already have a birth control implant, do you?"

Flicking her eyes to Ranger, Steph said, "No."

"When's your period?"

At Stephanie's incredulous face he added, "I could insert an actual three year birth control implant next to it at the same time." Shifting his focus to Ranger, he said, "Do you have one in your medical supply bin?" Ranger shook his head minutely. Jase turned back to Stephanie. "But you usually insert the birth control implant on the first through fifth day of your period."

Stephanie flushed. "I'm on the pill."

Shaking his head, Jase frowned. "Not smart. If you get abducted, do you think they're gonna pack you a toiletry bag? The pill's a shitty choice for you. You get kidnapped, you miss pills, you ovulate and your psycho rapist makes you a mommy."

Ranger stood up and left the room.

Stephanie watched him go and then turned back to Jase. "Why are you such an asshole?"

Leaning back into the couch, Jase stacked his hands behind his head and said, "I'm not here to be your friend or give you platitudes. He knows that. I don't know what the hell the two of you have done over the last three years besides fuck, because Carlos sure as shit hasn't prepared you for this kind of life."

"I told you it's complicated."

Jase rolled his eyes and stood up. "Do we have any alcohol?" When she didn't answer, he strolled to the kitchen and said, "No, no, no—don't get up, Princess."

He came back out of the kitchen swigging a beer. Setting the bottle on the dining table, he crossed to the storage cabinets and started rooting around. After a minute, he found the medical supply bin and pulled it out. Another few seconds of digging produced a medium sized, sealed surgical pack and a box of latex gloves.

Reaching back into the bin, he pulled out something that looked like Betadine and another bottle of clear gel. He looked back at Steph expectantly.

She squeaked, "You want to do it now?"

"He leaves tomorrow night."

Without answering, Steph stood and headed down the hall in search of Ranger. She found him in their bedroom closet going through his various weapons and ammo, choosing some things, discarding others. Once inside she closed the door and leaned against it.

She knew he was aware of her presence, but he kept working as if she wasn't there.

"You're leaving tomorrow night?"

Ranger paused a moment, his back to her. "Yes."

She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his waist, tipping her temple against his back. "Do you want me to—?"

She felt him heave a sigh before he put the weapon in his hand down. Turning, he cupped her face in his hands. She saw nothing but hollowness and regret in his eyes.

He said, "I've let you down."

"No."

Bending until his forehead touched hers, he whispered, "Yes."

"No, you've always taken care of me, you've always kept me safe."

"Babe, if I had taken care of you the way I should, you wouldn't have had so many close calls."

"So…"

He closed his eyes when he said, "I want you to let him implant the tracker."

"You can't do it for me?"

"If I had to."

"I'd rather _you_ did it."

"Let Jase do it. I don't want to hurt you."

She could hear the implication in his voice. He didn't want to be the cause of any more pain. He'd hurt her enough unintentionally. "Okay."

He let out the breath he'd been holding and stroked her cheeks with his thumbs. Giving her a nudge, he backed her into the door and pressed her against it. Lowering his mouth to hers, he grazed her lips with his once, twice, before pulling back a fraction and whispering, "Te amo."

Her heart stuttered as she absorbed the depth of his words. Every moment between them, every look, every kiss, every gesture and action rushed through her body, giving her the strength to return the words back to him. She blinked and a single tear rolled down her cheek. "I love you, too."

He stilled. "Do you?"

She turned her head slightly, kissed the center of his palm and nodded once.

Brushing her hair away from her face, he studied her eyes, looking for truth. Finding what he was looking for, his eyes softened as he leaned down and kissed her forehead tenderly. They stood like that for only a moment before he turned to resume his preparations.

Just as Stephanie was reaching for the doorknob, Ranger said, "I need you to make a decision while I'm gone."

Even though his back was to her, she nodded easily, thinking he wanted her to decide on a better birth control option or perhaps he wanted her to consider giving up her apartment and moving in with him at Rangeman. At one time, both topics would have seemed intrusive and pushy. Now they just seemed like practical issues.

In a low voice he said, "It's all or nothing, Stephanie."

"What?"

He turned back towards her. His face was blank but his eyes nearly pinned her to the door. "All or nothing."

"I don't understand."

"As long as we're together, hell, as long as we're in the same town, I put you at risk."

"I'm being trained."

"It's not enough."

"What would be enough? It seems like nothing is ever-"

" _Everything_ Jase said is true. You would have to be properly trained. Not by me. You would have to give up your apartment. You would have to belong to me fully for me to be able to protect you the way I need to. You would have to accept a security detail whenever you're not with me. You'd have to be willing-"

"Did you just say I would have to _belong_ to you fully? What the hell does that mean?"

Narrowing his eyes, he said, "If you can't live with it, I suggest you make the other choice."

She folded her arms over her chest. "What's the other choice?"

"I disappear from your life."

"Is that a threat?"

He locked his jaw and looked off to the side just long enough to keep his temper in check. Bringing his eyes back to her, he said, "It's a fact. I can't be in your life in _any capacity_ and not bring risk to you. And I can't protect you in half measures."

"So you would just leave me."

He stared at her unblinkingly. "I would leave. I'd have to."

"That makes no sense!"

"Stephanie, the only two ways I can keep you safe are to absorb you entirely into my life or to expel you completely out of it."

She choked out a laugh as she turned and began opening the door. "How romantic."

An instant later he was pressed into her back, the door slamming closed once again.

He rasped in her ear, "I'm trying to be honorable, Stephanie."

Feeling dominated and not liking it one bit, she wiggled against him.

He pushed his groin into her ass and grasped onto a fistful of her hair. "There's nothing romantic about this life. You have to choose."

She choked out, "Why does it have to be like this?"

"Why do you think I've pushed you away so many times?"

She sniffed and tugged her hair out of his grasp. "What … what time are you leaving tomorrow?"

"After dark. Maybe nine or ten." He wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder. "I should only be gone a week at most. Even when I call and give the all clear, I want you to stay and wait for me. Can you do that?"

She nodded as best she could with her head pressed against the door.

"Will that give you enough time to decide?"

"Yes."

"Because if you don't choose, I will. You may not like the decision I make for you."

Stephanie wandered out to the living area and found Jase watching the news. She cleared her throat to get his attention. "Where do you want me?"

He didn't look up. "The bed, I guess." He aimed the remote at the TV, shutting it off. "It's easier to implant if you're laying on your back with your arm relaxed and to the side."

She nodded and made her way toward the bedroom, pulling her sweatshirt over her head as she walked. When she entered the room, Ranger was stuffing essentials into a duffle on the bed.

Tossing her sweatshirt on the floor, she eyed Ranger's bag and said, "We need the bed."

He arched his brow at her standing there in her snug tank top and then at Jase as he walked in carrying his supplies. Ranger moved his duffle to the floor as Jase placed his items on the dresser.

Jase took a deep breath in and said, "Smells like sex in here."

Stephanie muttered, "You're a pig," as she straightened the sheets and the comforter. "Don't you need to wash your hands or something?"

Jase held up a bottle of antibacterial hand sanitizer. "I'm good. All right Princess, assume the position."

"Knock it off, Jase," Ranger growled.

Stephanie reclined on the center of the bed and extended her left arm. Jase stepped over and lifted her arm and placed a sterile drape underneath. Then he swabbed her skin with antiseptic.

Watching him work, Stephanie said, "Are you going to numb me?"

"I can. But the procedure itself only takes a minute."

She saw him coming at her with a device similar to a gun used to pierce ears. She shut her eyes.

Grasping her wrist gently, he positioned her arm to his liking. The bed dipped beside her and she felt Ranger take hold of her other hand, offering her a moment of comfort, an anchor. When she felt the nose of the device press against her skin, she gritted her teeth.

Jase said, "Stephanie, do you take Carlos to be your lawful-"

Ranger bit out, "Shut the fuck up, Jase."


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

Stephanie rolled to Ranger's side of the mattress to peer at the clock for the fifth time since coming to bed. It was nearly three in the morning and she had yet to find sleep. Ranger and Jase had sequestered themselves away in the office after Stephanie's procedure, now it sounded like they'd gone to the den or the kitchen.

Would he not come to bed tonight? She had never lived in such close quarters with Ranger prior to his going on missions so she had no idea what was usual for him and what was not. She had to wonder if he was avoiding her. Or perhaps he knew that like her, he would be unable to find sleep.

She had killed in the past, or rather had been forced to kill. But she had never gone to bed at night knowing that she would end someone's life in the coming day or days. Did it bother him? She knew that in this case, it was survival at its most primal level. Kill or be killed … or something close to it. She also knew that Ranger's mark was not a good man. The world would be a better place without him in it. But it was still a human life.

Kicking the blankets down, Stephanie climbed out of bed, tugged down Ranger's shirt to cover her panties and padded down the hall.

The men were at the kitchen table. Ranger was shirtless with his sculpted back to her, his arm lying across a blue sterile drape. She heard the pronounced click of the tracker applicator gun, but Ranger didn't flinch as she did. She unconsciously rubbed the inside of her arm over the small bandage Jase had placed there.

When Jase began cleaning up his supplies, he looked up and saw Stephanie. Ranger was pulling his shirt back over his head.

Stephanie stood stock-still at the entrance to the hall and softly said, "Ranger."

He glanced over his shoulder at her and then took the bandage that Jase offered him. Walking over to him, she motioned for Ranger to pull away the tight sleeve of his shirt while she applied the bandage. Finished, she looked at his face and saw that he was watching her.

She ran the tips of her fingers gently over the bandage. "You didn't … thank you."

He caught her fingers and kissed her palm, his eyes never leaving hers.

She whispered, "Come to bed."

He stood and threaded their fingers together as they walked down the short hall. He paused at the office door. "I'll be there in a second. I just have to get something."

Nodding, she released his hand and stepped into their bedroom. She had just climbed under the covers when Ranger came in. He closed the door and set the lock.

Sitting on the edge of the bed near her hip, Ranger handed her an electronic device. Taking it, she frowned up at him. "Is this like a smartphone? I didn't think it was safe to use cell phones."

He smiled softly at her. "It's not a smartphone. And if it were, it would be more like a Mensa phone. It's a computer of sorts. I have one too. It will allow you to access my bio data … you can see that I'm living and breathing. Jase will go over how to use the different functions. You'll be able to see my coordinates and he'll teach you how to read where I am."

Her lips kicked up a fraction. "So if you say you're running for milk, I'll be able to tell if you're really handing out fifty dollar bills at Domino's?"

Ranger chuckled. "If I were going to a strip club, I'd take you with me." His smile slowly slid away. "I have nothing to hide from you." Taking the device from her hand, he placed it on the nightstand. Then he stood and peeled off his shirt and shucked his cargos.

Following suit, Stephanie tugged the shirt over her head and tossed it to the floor. Then she held up the covers for Ranger to climb in. In moments, he was over her, his weight settled firmly between her thighs. With his forearms on either side of her head, the bandage on his bicep was just inches from her face. Lifting her head, she kissed to the right of the bandage and said, "How long will you keep it?"

His fathomless black eyes stared into hers. "As long as you keep yours."

Stephanie closed her eyes and smoothed her hands over the contours of his chest and shoulders. She had expected him to lean down and kiss her. When he didn't, she looked up at him in question and found him staring at her. "What's wrong?" she whispered.

He shook his head and leaned down, brushing his mouth over hers. His kiss was gentle and heart-achingly tender. He'd never kissed her like this, with such reverence.

She pulled away and choked out, "Don't kiss me like that."

Confused, he frowned and said, "Like what?"

"That felt like goodbye."

Placing his lips on her shoulder, his loose hair dragged across her breasts. "I'm sorry."

Laying open-mouthed kisses along the outer curve of one breast, his hand cupped the weight of the other, his index finger circling delicately around the areola.

Stephanie combed her fingers through his hair, pulling him in. She watched as he closed his eyes and drew a rosy tip into his mouth. As he suckled, she felt a jolt of desire tug directly at her womb. She blurted, "Are you ever afraid?"

Still suckling her, his eyes slowly opened. Releasing her nipple with an audible _pop_ , he answered, "Yes."

He rose above her on his knees, hooked his fingers into the hips of her panties and dragged them down. When he tugged them off completely, he captured her foot and licked a long line from her ankle to the back of her knee.

She shuddered out a breath and said, "Of dying?"

He impaled her with dilated eyes as he nipped the skin of her inner thigh. "No."

Pressing her knee toward her chest, he stroked at her cleft and swirled her wetness over her clit. She let out a breathy moan and arched toward his hand. He spread her legs wider with his shoulders and leaned down to place a soft kiss at the apex of her sex. Stephanie gripped at his shoulders and said, "You're trying to distract me."

He took one long lap of her sex from bottom to top and circled her nub with a sharply pointed tongue. "Mmmm," he hummed as his lips surrounded her clit. "I'm trying to love you." He tasted her again, then buried his tongue, the sound of growled pleasure purring from his throat and vibrating against her.

When he entered her with his fingers, she flexed her hips and pressed towards his mouth because she needed more. Moments later she found herself pulling back when she got too close. She panted, "Let me love you. Let me make love to you."

Since he showed no signs of relenting, she dug her heels into his back and used the leverage to scoot way from his sinful mouth. He looked up at her with sharp predator's eyes, not happy with the escape of his prey.

She shimmied to her knees and crawled back toward his prone body, leaning over his head and shoulders to kiss and lick the beautiful topography of his back. His muscles shivered and tensed as the length of her curls tickled along his sides.

Leaning further over him, she stroked along his rippled muscles, her hands gliding over the pronounced curve of his ass. She felt the rumble of his groan and in the next instant, he flipped over, hauled her thigh over his head, tipped his head up and tasted her again.

Stephanie gasped, grasping her breasts, she sat up, straddling is face. Her hips swiveled and undulated as his tongue intermittently danced, and lapped at her. His hands gripped her ass and she fell forward on all fours, bracing herself on his thighs.

Her hand unerringly encircled and stroked him. When her tongue came into play, Ranger's oral ministrations ceased and she heard him groan her name. With her free hand she caressed his sac, then took as much of his length as she could in her mouth, moaning at the taste she had thought long forgotten.

She knew Ranger had given up the fight when she felt his head drop back against the mattress between her knees. She stroked his length with her hand and her mouth, taking him as deeply as she could. Ranger's fingers took over the work that his mouth could no longer concentrate on doing.

"God, Babe, so good … don't stop." His hips began to thrust toward her mouth as he gave in to the sensation of the erotic gift his lover was giving him. Lifting her mouth from him, she licked and sucked at his sac, still pumping his length in her hand.

He jack-knifed upright and shoved her roughly forward. Clasping her hips with his powerful hands, he buried himself inside her to the hilt. He laid his chest across her back and panted into her neck. "Have to be inside you. Have to come inside you."

Slowly, he started to withdraw, and just as slowly, he reversed his direction. Keeping his carefully measured pace, he wrapped one arm around her waist as the other hand cupped the supple softness of her breast. He murmured words of promise and love into her hair, some in Spanish and some in English, and each word, each phrase made the connection of their bodies more profound, more intimate.

Somehow, they had become nearly upright, with Ranger kneeling and Stephanie straddling his lap, her back tight against his chest.

He pinched gently at her nipple with one hand and the fingers of the other circled at the apex of her sex.

"Come, sweetheart," he breathed in her ear. "I need to feel you come around me."

Stephanie laced her fingers with his between her thighs and together they increased the tempo and friction. Then her own hand dropped lower and she felt her slickness coating him where they were joined. She reached over her head and grasped at his hair, pulling his mouth over hers.

When Ranger stroked his tongue against hers, his low, animalistic groan resonated in her mouth, triggering her blinding climax. Wave upon wave of sensation coursed and contracted through her groin, her thighs, and her sex. Ranger latched his mouth on the tendon between her neck and shoulder and bit down at the moment he came inside her.

Stephanie opened her eyes and knew something wasn't right. She was laying belly down on Ranger's side of the bed but Ranger was nowhere to be found. The clock on the nightstand said 5:00.

Climbing out of bed, she went straight for the door. At the last moment, she remembered Jase and threw on a clean t-shirt and panties. The hall was silent and the office door was ajar. She peeked her head in and saw Jase tapping away at the laptop. She crept down the hall expecting to see Ranger in the den. He wasn't there. She scanned the dining area and the kitchen. Nothing. Her heart speeding up, she quickly walked to the bathroom and pushed the door open to find it dark and empty.

"Goddamn you!"

A moment later, Jase was behind her with his hands on her shoulders. "Steph-"

She spun around, slapped at his chest and shoved him away. "Go to hell!"

Stomping back into the bedroom with Jase close behind, she pulled jeans out of her dresser and stabbed her legs into them, tugging them up over her ass with such force, a belt loop ripped. She shoved her feet into sneakers, grabbed her purse off the dresser and pushed past Jase to head back down the hall.

"Steph!" he called after her.

"He just snuck out?" Dumping the contents of her purse on the coffee table, she snagged up the fob and aimed it at the door with a shaking hand. Hearing the click of the lock release, she went for the door. Moments before she reached it, Jase's arms came around her, holding hers against her sides, rendering her immobile.

She kicked out and railed, "Let me go! Did he just leave? How could he just leave?" Her voice raised in volume and shrillness with each sentence.

"Stephanie, calm down." When she successfully clipped him in the shin with her heel, he said, "Fuck!" Spinning around, he tossed her unceremoniously on the couch.

He stared down at her, hands on hips, waiting for her to pull herself together and catch her breath. When she made to stand up, he snarled, "Sit. Down."

"When did he leave?"

He glanced at his watch and said, "A little over twelve hours ago."

"What?"

"It's after five p.m. You've been asleep over twelve hours."

She shook her head furiously. "No … no."

"The sooner he leaves, the sooner he comes back for you."

Running her hands through her messy hair, she said, "He lied to me."

Jase shook his head and sat down on the coffee table across from her. "No. He wasn't going to leave until tonight. He changed his mind at the last minute."

"Why?"

He shrugged.

"Why wouldn't he say goodbye?"

Jase watched her for a moment before slouching down, elbows on his knees. "Soldiers don't like to say goodbye. We say, 'see you on the other side,' and, 'Godspeed, man.'"

She dropped her eyes to her lap and whispered, "He didn't even give me that."

Jase stood and then squatted in front of her, tipping her chin up. He moved his hand from her chin and traced it lightly over the fresh mark on her shoulder before dropping his hand once again. "Stephanie, he told you goodbye in the only way he could."


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

Stephanie spent the next four days on autopilot. Jase decided to take advantage of Stephanie's anger and resentment and channel it into her training. Three hours a day were devoted to the betterment of Stephanie Plum. She spent the first hour running on the treadmill and doing the fitness routine Jase had designed for her. The second hour was spent teaching her an Israeli form of close contact combat called Krav Maga. The Israel Defense may have created it, but the FBI, the US Special Forces and the Irish and British Special Forces were staunch followers. It was an unscripted, raw and very realistic form of self-defense and there was a gritty 'him or me' quality involved that felt especially rewarding to Stephanie. She reveled in the opportunity to vent her spleen on Jase all in the name of training.

Jase had procured mouth guard kits, wrappings for their hands, shin protectors and waist guards from the closet in Ranger's office. When Stephanie questioned how realistic the skirmishes would seem with all the safeguards in place, he explained that she needed to learn to throw punches and kick properly. She wouldn't throw punches hard enough if she was afraid of hurting her hands. And as a woman, she was more likely not to use full force if she subconsciously thought she was going to hurt him. She wasn't sure she agreed with him. She _really_ wanted to hurt him.

They would break for lunch, with Stephanie eating alone in the dining area and Jase taking his MRE to the office. They never had casual conversation. Jase would bark out instructions while training her, shake his head in disgust or mock her, asking if this was the best she could do. When that didn't get the reaction he wanted, he would flat out insult her.

In the afternoon, they would spend an hour freestyle kickboxing. He gave her little instruction; just let her work through her aggression. Occasionally he would taunt her, call her Princess and wonder aloud if she broke a nail. She had broken all of her nails but she had also broken the glass on the front of the stereo cabinet, the leg of one end table and Jase's healing nose. When her energy began to flag, he'd get more insulting, more demanding, more demeaning.

Which was how she found herself pinned face down on the living room floor. He was sitting on the small of her back with her wrists pinned easily over her head in one hand. His sweaty form was leaning over her and a bead of blood from his nose had just dripped down onto her cheek.

"I thought we were kickboxing. I didn't know this was a free-for-all," she spat through her mouth guard.

"Little Princess fell down and went boom. You think your opponent's going to play fair?"

She wiggled her hips and tugged at her arms ineffectively for a moment before pausing to rethink her strategy.

Jase tipped forward until his mouth was touching her ear. He whispered, "Keep wiggling, puta, and I'll hurt you in a different way."

She tried to block out his words knowing he was only trying to test her resolve, train her not to react from emotion. She chanted a mantra in her head. _His words mean nothing. He can't break me. He won't break me._

Gathering her strength, she bucked her hips trying valiantly to dislodge him. He didn't move an inch. Chuckling, he murmured in her ear, "Very nice, Princess. Are you this lively when Manoso rides you?"

Silently cursing the tears in her eyes, she gritted out, "Shut the fuck up!"

In the blink of an eye, he flipped her over, never losing his hold on her wrists. His hard thighs bracketing hers, his other arm crossed his body as though he were about to backhand her. She never flinched or closed her eyes.

Dropping his arm he leaned over her again, staring at her through his chillingly emotionless eyes. "You're a brave little whore, you know that?" His calloused finger touched gently where her pulse beat madly at the hollow of her throat. Then it skimmed down her sternum, her abdomen, until it paused just under the elastic of her running shorts. Still panting from her exertions, she kept as still as she could and stared belligerently back at him.

His eyes dropped to where his finger played idly with the drawstring he'd tugged out of her shorts. Quietly he said, "You think Manoso is gonna want you back after I get through with you? He seems like a fastidious man. He might not want to kiss that pretty mouth of yours after you've swallowed me a couple dozen times."

She turned her head to the side, squeezed her eyes shut tight. _His words mean nothing. He can't break me. He won't break me. His words mean nothing. He can't break me. He won't break me._

He maneuvered a finger up under her waist guard and swirled his finger into her belly button. "Come to think of it, he might not like how I'll leave that pussy of yours. Not to mention what I'm gonna do to your pristine little ass."

Stephanie snapped. She tipped her pelvis to the side and got just enough leverage to lift her head high. Opening her jaw, she caught a hunk of flesh on Jase's inner arm between her mouth guard and lower teeth and clamped her teeth shut. Hard.

Jase hissed in pain and lifted his pelvis from hers as he dug his fingers into her jaw, attempting to get her to open her mouth. He forcibly spat his mouth guard out and yelled, "Don't fuckin' break the skin! Let go!"

Mouth still clamped around his arm, Stephanie held still, panting through her nose and glaring at him with fire in her eyes.

Jase muttered, "Goddamn it," and pinched hard at the joints of her jaw, forcing her to let go.

He stood up from his crouched position over her and started stripping off his gear. She lay prone on the floor, too mentally and physically exhausted to move.

"Nicely done. But don't ever fuckin' bite me again."

She stared at him boldly. "I'm not sorry I did it."

Shaking his head, he studied his inner arm, clearly relieved that there was only bruising and a crescent row of teeth marks. "If you had broken the skin, you would have put me at risk for a very nasty infection. The broad-spectrum antibiotics Carlos has may not have cut it. You may hate me, but you need me healthy. No teeth. No nails. You got me?"

Dropping her eyes, she nodded.

He shook his head and walked toward the kitchen. "Go take a shower."

As he rooted in the freezer for ice, she limped to the bathroom and closed the door. Turning on the water, she peeled off her tank top, running shorts, bra and panties and stood under the scalding spray until her skin turned pink. Then she scrubbed her body down with Ranger's shower gel. Once she rinsed the lather away, she pressed her face and chest into the cool tile wall and wept.

When she stepped out of the bathroom, Jase was leaning against the wall opposite the door. Panicked and clad only in her towel, she clutched her dirty clothes to her chest.

His eyes coasted lazily down her body before returning on the same leisurely route to her face. "You know, the mouth is actually one of the dirtiest parts of the human body."

Glaring at him, she made her way to the bedroom. She attempted to shut the door in his face but he stopped its momentum with the heel of his hand.

Stepping into the closet, she heard the creak of him sitting on the bed. He said, "If you'd ever seen an infection from a human bite, you wouldn't be so insulted. I'm gonna have to assume that since Carlos is comfortable swapping bodily fluids with you, you're clean. It's just that the human mouth-"

"I have the clap. And oral herpes. I just noticed a tingle on my lip this morning."

She heard him snort. Since she hadn't thought to grab any fresh underwear, she had no choice but to go commando. With a sigh, she pulled on some running pants and one of Ranger's thicker hoodies.

Walking out of the closet, she saw that Jase was lying on Ranger's side of the bed, head on Ranger's pillow, and he was fiddling with her hand-held tracking computer. She had mentally dubbed it her 'Mensa phone'.

Narrowing her eyes at him, she tugged the pillow from under his head and grabbed the phone from his hand.

Clutching Ranger's pillow to her chest, she pushed a few buttons on the phone and sighed when she saw his little green light shining brightly. The light blurred and distorted as her eyes glazed with more stupid, unwanted tears.

Jase sat up and studied her. "You have to toughen up, sweetness, or you're not gonna make it in his world."

Placing the phone gently on the dresser, she muttered, "I'm getting there. You make a very convincing rapist, Jase. On the job training?"

He flinched a moment before his face fell into the blank lines of the soulless. "You think I could rape you? You think I find pleasure in causing you pain?"

She whispered, "Yes."

He shook his head minutely and stood up. "Good." He stepped forward until he was inches in front of her. "Maybe I'll get a bonus when this is all over. Some compensation for the never-ending boner-"

She hauled off and smacked him in the face. His head jerked on impact but he was otherwise frighteningly still.

She smacked him again, harder, and in exactly the same spot on his tanned cheek. He took a step back, shoved his hands in his pockets and sighed. "If you're trying to get me to hit back, it's not going to work. But I have to tell you; I really wish you'd lay off my face. God knows between Manoso and you, my nose is never going to be the same. I'd like to get laid in the next decade."

She laughed mirthlessly and stepped around him to walk to the bathroom. He followed her. Stepping in front of the mirror, she tugged a brush through her hair, attempting to tame it enough to put in a ponytail.

He leaned in the doorway, watching her. "If you think those things I said to you while we were training were bad, you're in for a rude awakening."

Ignoring him, she twisted an elastic around her hair, flipped off the light and headed for the den.

When she flopped onto the couch, he sat down next to her. She got up, grabbed the remote and pushed the chair into a position to view the TV.

Jase stood up and turned off the TV moments after she clicked it on. She threw the remote at his chest and said, "Would you leave me alone? You don't strike me as the social type. You strike me more as the serial killer type. What's your story? Overbearing mother? Abusive father? Can't get laid because your charming personality scares chicks away? Can't keep a woman? No wonder you're such a brilliant rape-defense trainer. You probably get a hard-on every time you get an assignment."

His flat eyes sharpened, his pupils spiraled down to pinpricks.

After a long minute of staring at her, he spun on his heel and went down the hall.

At midnight, Stephanie decided it was time to take her sore body to bed. When she passed Jase's room, she saw that the door was open and Jase was sitting on the floor, back against the daybed, staring at the wall across from him.

She paused in the doorway and looked at him. There was something so sad about his bearing, but she couldn't put a finger on what it was. His jaw was tense, his eyes were dry and if he was breathing, she couldn't detect it.

He was dressed in his usual track pants and no shirt. He had long elegant feet with neatly clipped toenails. She could just see the blossoming bruise on the inside of his left arm. It was in almost the same place as her tracker. When her eyes reached his face, she saw that he was watching her impassively.

His hard mouth twisted to the side as he scrutinized her. "Like what you see? Better scurry off to bed before you trigger my rapist tendencies, Princess." He looked down at his lap, tugged his waistband away from his stomach and peered into his pants. "No hard-on yet, but you never know with us serial killer types."

Her eyes dropped to the floor in shame. Clearing her throat, she said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."

He sighed and resumed staring at the wall. "I know."

Stepping into the room, Stephanie skirted around him and climbed up on the bed. Lounging back on the pillows propped against the wall, she stared at the back of his head.

Softly she said, "What's your story?"

He choked out a laugh. "You don't want to hear that, Princess."

"Yes. Actually, I do."

After a long, protracted silence, he finally said, "I wasn't always this charming."

A laughed bubbled out of her unexpectedly. Stephanie tipped on her side and curled up against his pillow. It smelled like Ivory soap. "What were you like?"

His head angled down as he stared at his hands in his lap. "I know you'll find this hard to believe, but I was a smartass."

"I can see that."

"I partied too much, drank too much, got high too much-"

Stephanie interjected, "Got laid too much; I get the picture. Then what happened?"

She could almost hear the smile in his voice when he said, "Can you really get laid too much?"

"Jase."

"Shit. I don't know. I joined the Navy."

"You weren't Army like Ranger?"

"Nope. Navy like your boyfriend."

She sucked in a breath. "He's not my boyfriend anymore. How do you know about Joe?"

"It's my job. I know everything about my principal before I accept an assignment."

"Is Ranger paying you?"

"He'll try, but I won't accept it."

"So you were playing dumb asking all those questions about how long Ranger and I have been together?"

"I thought I was playing smart."

"You didn't meet Ranger in the military?"

"I did."

"But you're Navy and he's Army."

"I was a SEAL and he was a Ranger."

"They work together?"

"At times."

"So … you became an asshole when you met Ranger? I can see that."

He barked out a laugh and shook his head. "You're a trip. I can see the appeal. I bet you didn't fall all over him and bat your eyelashes when you met him."

"No. He intimidated me, but I didn't want to insult him. He bothered to show up and I could tell that he was more than the persona he projected so I just treated him with professional respect."

"Huh. That had to have been a new one for Carlos. Usually chicks piss their pants and run away, or they flop on their backs and beg."

"Nice. Thanks for sharing."

"I'm just sayin'."

"How did the women react to you?"

"About the same as they did to Carlos."

"Modest much?"

"Just telling you how it was."

"You haven't really told me anything. You're doing the same thing Ranger does. Throwing out tidbits, making me think you're giving me something but in reality you've told me nothing."

"Carlos know you have that all figured out?"

"Yes."

He shook his head in mock sadness. "Carlos is a dead man."

She whispered, "Don't say that."

He turned and looked at her, and for the first time she saw humanity in his eyes. "It was just a joke—I didn't really mean it literally."

"I know. Just don't joke about it. Please."

He turned back around and looked down at his lap again. "Her name was Isobel."

Stephanie said nothing; afraid he wouldn't continue if she interrupted.

"We met working a case together. She was a profiler."

"And you were?"

"Hired for the assignment by a faction of the government that doesn't exist."

"Okay."

"She was … she is a beautiful woman. Maybe not classically. Kind of a girl next-door thing goin' on, you know? She's Puerto Rican."

"You keep going between was and is. She's … she's alive, right?"

"Yes."

"So…"

"So we fell in love. I resisted for a long time. She had a relatively safe life and I …"

"Got it."

"But she wore me down eventually. She moved in with me, but with my, uh, job the way it was, we still didn't have a whole lot of time together. She came up with this idea that my team could use a profiler. She would go on undercover assignments with us and we'd have access to a 'real time' profiler; the psychological muscle we were missing on the team.

"I didn't go for it at first. I'm no different than Carlos. I just wanted to keep her as far from that side of my life as possible."

Stephanie asked, "But eventually?"

"Eventually I agreed. I trained her myself," he said ruefully.

"And?"

"An assignment went FUBAR. She wasn't even supposed to be near the compound. She got shot."

"But you said she's alive."

"She got shot low, near the spine." His hands tightened into fists in his lap until his knuckles turned white. He mumbled, "She suffered from paralysis for a while. She, uh … she can never have kids because of it."

Stephanie said nothing for a while and Jase didn't seem to have anything to add. Finally, Steph said, "I'm sorry."

As if she hadn't spoken, he said, "I saw it happen. I was so pissed off at her for being where she shouldn't be. It was like two worlds collided and I couldn't just go with the flow. I wasn't sharp. I wasn't paying enough attention. I wasn't alert. Not like I should have been."

Suddenly, something clicked into place for Stephanie. "Are you—are you Ranger's friend that gave him the SEALS hat?"

He nodded once.

Without thinking, she blurted, "I thought you were dead."

He smiled derisively at her and said, "You've met me. I might as well be."

"Don't say that."

"She married someone else."

"She left you?"

"No."

"You left her?"

"I pushed her away. I stayed with her through her recovery. But I couldn't take the way she looked at me. I was responsible for destroying her life and she only looked at me with love in her eyes. Acceptance. Hope."

"I don't understand."

"Fuck, Stephanie, she could have been permanently paralyzed. She can't have kids." He muttered, "I couldn't get past the guilt."

Stephanie sighed and reached to stroke the back of Jase's hair once. His eyes closed as he pressed his head back into her hand.

Just as she was beginning to doze, she thought about the story Jase had told her. Ranger had to know all of it.

"Jase?"

"Mmmm?" He was beginning to nod off too.

"When did this happen?"

"Five years ago." He reached over her and grabbed a pillow and then curled up on the floor beside the bed.

Five years was a long time. But when she had met Ranger, only two years would have passed. Those two years had certainly been long enough for Ranger to decide that his lifestyle didn't lend itself to relationships. After seeing what had happened with his friend, could she really blame him for thinking that?

She realized that by telling her his story, Jase had told her Ranger's story too.

The satellite phone jolted them both awake the next morning. Jase pushed up off the floor and nearly knocked the phone off the desk as he grabbed for it.

"Yo."

Stephanie sat up, shoved a hank of hair away from her face and watched Jase warily. She knew who it was when Jase's eyes locked on hers.

Stephanie leaned forward and grabbed the phone from him. "Carlos? Are you okay?"


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N:** We're in the home stretch! There are three more chapters to go after this one. My son, who was just starting middle school when I originally wrote this, is graduating high school in less than two weeks. With a gazillion relatives coming to town for the auspicious occasion, it is my plan to get the rest of the story posted in its entirety before the first guest arrives and chaos ensues.

 **Chapter 13**

She heard Ranger let out a gust of breath against the receiver. "I'm okay, Babe."

Looking up, she noticed that Jase had left the room. "Are you—are you done?"

"Almost. Stephanie, you're on a secure phone but-"

"Got it. Um, so …"

Ranger sighed. "No details, Babe."

Stephanie didn't know whether to laugh or cry. This would be another thing they couldn't talk about. She knew he was right about phone security, but she doubted he would ever share the details of what happened. If she were honest with herself, she really didn't want to know. In the end, she just wanted to hear him talk, wanted to know when this would be over.

"So you have a few ... meetings before you can come home?"

He let out a short laugh, but it wasn't a sound filled with any happiness, just resignation. "Yeah. Something like that."

"Do you have any idea when you'll be done?"

"Couple of days. No more than a week."

"Promise?" He didn't answer the question. He would never make a promise to her he couldn't keep. They were both silent awhile just listening to one another breathe. Stephanie said softly, "I miss you."

Just as softly, Ranger said, "Me, too."

Before she could edit her thoughts, she blurted, "I hate this."

Gruffly, he said, "Me, too."

When he fell silent again, Stephanie shut her eyes and tried to listen for background noises, some clue as to where he was. There was nothing.

He cleared his throat and said, "How are you holding up?"

"I re-broke Jase's nose. Well, you did it the first time, but at this rate-"

"Babe." This time, she could hear a genuine smile in his voice.

"He asked for it."

"I'm sure he did." He paused for a moment then said, "He's not a bad person, Stephanie. I hope you know I wouldn't have left you with him-"

"I know."

"Do you?"

"Yeah, I know." She closed her eyes again and said, "He told me about Isobel."

There was a stunned silence that stretched and pulled until Stephanie felt compelled to try to fill the void. It was as if she had said _I know why you've kept yourself so closed off to me. I know why you pushed me away._

Just as she was about to speak, to clarify, Ranger said, "I have to go."

"Oh. Okay." She felt a little hurt, but chided herself that he might not be in a safe place and the sooner he finished his tasks, the sooner he would return to her.

She began to pull the phone away from her ear, assuming he would just hang up. He never said goodbye. As her thumb hovered over the 'end' button, something inside of her told her to put the phone back to her ear.

"Carlos?"

She heard him exhale a shaky breath, then grunt an affirmative sound.

"I wish you had said goodbye to me."

"Just now?"

"No."

"I did say goodbye to you."

"When you made love to me? That doesn't count."

"Everything counts. Words can imply too little or be misconstrued. I've always been very clear with my actions toward you."

She fell quiet then, unsure of what to say.

"Stephanie, I really have to go."

"I love you."

He let out a long breath and she could just picture him closing his eyes, absorbing her words. He rasped, "I love you, too."

The next three days passed slowly. Jase and Stephanie fell into a routine, much as she had with Ranger. The training sessions were tougher each day, both physically and emotionally. But when the gloves were off, they were off.

Jase never brought up Isobel again, and neither did Stephanie. She spent most of her afternoons alone while Jase did whatever he was doing in the office, but in the evenings, they shared a quiet meal together and then retired to the den to watch trashy cable programming. Jase was a TV talker. He felt the compulsion to comment and complain throughout every show, and even yell at the actors, mock them, and tell Stephanie what _he_ would do. If two female actresses began to argue or fight, he would provide a ' _chicka-chicka-bow-bow'_ porn music accompaniment. He would comment on the realistic and unrealistic elements of crime and alphabet agency shows. Interesting? Somewhat. Annoying? You bet.

Every morning when she woke up, Stephanie checked her Mensa phone and sighed in relief when she saw the lime green light pulsing. Every night before she slept, she repeated the routine with the addition of a prayer for Ranger's safe return.'

On the morning of the fourth day, Stephanie woke up to a low-level chirp. Slapping her hand against the alarm clock did nothing to eliminate the sound. Lifting her head from her pillow, she frowned at the nightstand as she realized it was her phone device emitting the sound. Warily, she picked up the phone and looked at the screen. Instead of the green blip, she saw a text type message: Bio data = zero.

Bio data = zero.

Bio data = zero.

Bio data = zero.

Stumbling from the bed, a chill sweeping over her entire body, Stephanie bolted down the hall to the darkened bathroom and dropped to her knees in front of the toilet. There was little in her stomach but she felt like it might clear her vision, turn down the volume on the ringing in her ears, give proof to the all-consuming emptiness she felt.

Suddenly she became aware of the overhead light coming on, a warm body against her back, and a strong arm around her waist. No amount of wishing would make it Ranger; she knew it was Jase.

"Stephanie. Try to take deep, slow breaths. What's wrong? What did you eat? When did this start?"

Stephanie remained where she was hunched over the toilet, but she moved her right hand to lie across the phone on the counter. Jase reached over and pulled the device from under her hand. He was silent. Another dry heave wracked her body and Jase tightened the arm around her waist for a moment. When the wrenching sensations passed, Jase gave a final absent rub across her back before sitting down completely. He leaned against the wall across from the toilet and began furiously tapping away at the touch pad. Stephanie dropped onto her bottom and scooted over to lean against the tub adjacent to him. Jase's face was completely blank, even his eyes lost the humanity they'd recently held.

Steph croaked out, "It's broken. Please tell me it's broken."

Jaw locked, Jase didn't meet her eyes. "The other functions appear to be in order. I can see the coordinates of his location. When was the last time you checked his location?"

She hadn't. Ever. Which was why she couldn't manage to look him in the eye.

Crawling over Jase's extended legs, she pulled herself up in front of the sink where she methodically banded her hair in a ponytail and brushed her teeth. After spitting the toothpaste out, she leaned heavily against the counter watching the foamy water spiral down. With conviction, she said, "He's not dead. I would feel it." She knew that the way she stood, defeated, belied her bold pronouncement.

She felt Jase watching her, probably contemplating what, if anything, to say in response to her statement. In the end, he just stood and went toward the office, device in hand.

Stephanie slowly lifted her head and stared at the bewildered woman in the mirror. Her eyes looked bleak, hollow, empty. Her skin was ashen and her mouth was drawn in a tight line. She raised a trembling hand to her mouth and thought about words that had spilled from her lips both in anger and in love. She had told him she loved him. He knew that. But she had also told him she hated him. Hated this. If he had—if he were—she couldn't even think in the terms of _died_ or _dead_ —would he think, or was it thought?—that she was saying that she hated this so much she would let him walk away from her? That she couldn't do this? That she didn't love him enough to do this?

She thought back to the night he came to get her. She'd told him she hated him. She'd called him insane, an asshole, and a psychotic mercenary jerk. She dug her nails into her lips, hating her mouth, hating herself for refusing to filter every juvenile and passive aggressive thought that had run through her mind and tumbled past her lips. When the metallic taste of blood eased over the edge of her tongue, she dropped her hand and stared at the miniscule smear of red on her fingertips. Looking up, she saw the woman in the mirror had a small cut on her lower lip adding a macabre splash of color to her gray face. She lifted her hand and smeared the small amount of blood around her mouth and a little below. It hurt. It felt good because she felt the pain; she wasn't completely numb.

Jase's voice echoed across the hall and brought her out of her bizarre trance. He was on the phone. On rubber legs, she wandered into the office and stopped in front of the desk. He was talking in low tones and was hooking up the phone device to a port in the laptop. When he noticed her, his eyes were initially blank until he saw her mouth. He barked a terse, "Hold on," into the phone and frowned up at her. "What did you do to yourself?"

Stephanie dropped her eyes and just shook her head. She felt the weight of his eyes on her and it felt like judgment. Softly, he said, "Princess, come here."

As she walked around the desk, he scooted his chair back and pulled her down across his lap. Numbly, she leaned her head into his shoulder as he sat back. Then he held her head to his chest and resumed his phone conversation.

"I did that already. There was movement up until two days ago and then nothing." He paused again, listening. "Of course I taught her how to read it. Carlos asked me to. I don't think she ever checked for movement or she would have said something." There was a long period where Jase simply listened and absently stroked her hair. "Shoulda, coulda, woulda, man. No, I didn't check it for her. _It's hers_. He didn't ask me to-" His hand tensed in her hair. "No you can't check it remotely. If you or I could check it remotely, any uber-hacker could check it remotely. That was the flaw with the last prototype. It's why Ranger never allowed one before."

Oh God. Intimidated by the device, she had only been checking to see if he was alive and well, not following his movements. If she had been, would she have known when he had gone down, but was still alive? He had trusted her with the one thing he had allowed no one else to do. Had she failed him in the most profound way? Did he wonder why no one came for him? Did he have long to wonder, or had-

"Goddamn it, Tank, I don't know. We don't exactly have these through legal channels, and if we did, it's not like there's some help desk we could call. You have the last coordinates and I'm uploading-"

Stephanie sat up and licked her lips; they stung. "I want to talk to him."

Grabbing the phone from Jase, she asked, "Where is he?"

Tanks deep voice replied, "Mexico. Just across the border of-"

"Is he dead?" Her stomach lurched just saying the words.

Tank breathed a heavy sigh and said, "I don't know."

Through the phone she heard the creak of his chair and she pictured him leaning back, closing his eyes and rubbing his smooth head with a beefy hand, trying to find the right words to say to her. "Jase is uploading the data from the device and sending me the file. I'll have to comb through it. Those particular trackers are prototypes and haven't been formally field-tested. There's always a chance of device error. But the thing is … the device is still working, if you get what I'm saying. It's just—it's still. It looks like he hasn't moved."

"Could he have been cut and it fell out? Or maybe he took it out?"

He sighed. "Short of surgery, Steph, there's no removing the thing. It wouldn't be something he'd do in the field. And he would know the reading that would give you. He wouldn't want you to worry. I just can't see him not contacting you."

"But he could be in a hostage situation."

There was a pause. "He could be."

"You don't believe he is."

"That man has been taken hostage exactly once, and it was bad. It changed him. He won't go hostage again. He'd kill with his bare hands or die trying."

"So you're telling me he's dead."

"Stephanie. Just give us some time."

"Are you sending a team to Mexico?"

"Yes. I'm on point."

"Who else is going?"

"Santos, Brown, Ramos-"

"Is it search and rescue or search and retrieval," Steph cut in.

There was a pointed pause before Tank said, "Keep the faith, Steph. We're gonna find him. Put Jase back on."

Stephanie handed off the phone and flopped on Jase's bed, curling into his pillow. The chill that had swept over her had now settled into her bones; she'd wrap herself in his blankets but she knew it wouldn't help. At least the ringing in her ears had subsided. Now all she could hear were her terrible thoughts vying for dominance in her head.

She'd just started picking at her lip again when she was startled by the sound of Jase smashing the satellite phone with a free weight. She sat up clutching the pillow, looking uncomprehendingly at the destroyed phone on the ground. "What the hell did you just do?"

He sifted through the shards, picking up a few components, presumably to further destroy in another way. "We have to operate under the assumption that the sat phone may have somehow been compromised. They're difficult to track, but at this point we can't take a chance that it's broadcasting our location to the wrong eyes. We're now in total lock-down mode for direct communications."

But how would Ranger contact them? "We still have the laptop for email," she reminded him as she watched him drop the smallest electronic parts of the destroyed phone into his bottled water on the desk.

"It's allegedly secure, but I'm not taking any chances right now communications-wise. We're down to using pre-arranged message boards and codes."

"You don't have a cell phone?"

"Not secure, Princess. We don't know who or what happened to Carlos. We still don't know if you're safe. I won't place a call from this location."

"So we move."

"It might not be safe to move. We're going to sit tight until we know something."

She burrowed her face into his pillow. Lifting her head, she felt an absurd twist in her heart at the tiny red smear she left in the middle of the pristine white pillowcase. "You mean we're gonna sit tight until they find his body."

"That's worst-case scenario."

"Explain why staying here is better than relocating. If you think that the sat phone might have been compromised-"

"He ordered you to stay here."

Stephanie's back stiffened. "He did no such thing. He asked-"

"Ordered."

She narrowed her eyes at Jase. "I'm getting that you guys were—are close, but I have a hard time believing he would share—wait a minute. Did he order _you_ to do anything?"

If she hadn't been watching closely, she would have missed the slight flare of his emotionless eyes.

"He did, didn't he?"

Jase spun and left the room, and as though attached by a string, Steph followed him. She found him rooting through the medical bin until he came up with hydrogen peroxide and some Neosporin. After putting his supplies on the kitchen table, he stepped into the kitchen. He ran a wad of paper towel under the tap before adding a small dollop of antibacterial soap. Returning to where she stood by the table, he clasped her jaw and concentrated on cleaning up her lip. She flinched and hissed, but he continued his task dispassionately.

Tossing the slightly stained paper towel in the garbage, he handed her a dry square and then retrieved the hydrogen peroxide and ointment. As he watched the cleaning agent bubble and turn white against the cut, he said, "My life for yours."

When he dabbed a freshly damp cotton swab against the cut, she tried to pull away from the sting. "Take care of you like you're mine."

She narrowed her eyes so hard, she knew he felt the intensity like a slap across the face. Eyes boring into hers, his grip on her jaw tightened. "Not like that. Christ." His focus returned to her lip. "I don't know what he was thinking, considering how well I took care of Izzy."

Shaking his head, he squeezed a strand of antibiotic ointment onto a fresh cotton swab. Grasping her face, more gently this time, he painted her lower lip delicately. When he was done, he gave her face a little shake and said, "No more self-mutilation. No cutting. All the rules that apply to fighting apply to respect for your own body."

"I didn't-"

"I don't want to hear it. I'll tie you down to the fuckin' bed if I think you're gonna harm yourself again. If I let you get broken-"

"Too late," she whispered.

Clenching his jaw, he began putting some things away, throwing others in the garbage.

"I don't want to be here anymore." She could feel her numbness sliding straight into good-old unproductive hysteria.

"You think I'm enjoying this, Princess? I know you've been stuck in a perpetual fight-or-fight mode for a lot longer than the average civilian, but you need to get a grip on your emotions, Steph."

"Like you're the picture of emotional health," she parried.

Jase scrutinized her as he leaned heavily against the counter. "We wait, Stephanie. This is not up for discussion."

She turned from the kitchen and headed down the hall to the bedroom. Crawling up the bed, she curled herself around Ranger's pillow, inhaling his scent. Was it fading already? She looked up at Jase as he entered the room. When he saw her, his eyes seemed to soften fractionally.

He said, "Stephanie, we have to stay here. At least until we know something more concrete. You know that, don't you?"

Part of her understood what he was saying. Ranger had wanted her here to assure her safety. And it this point her safety was far from certain. But as she glanced around the room, all she could see was _him_. He was in this bed, in the closet, in her heart … it should comfort her, but it only served to remind her of what she didn't have right now. What she might never have again.

"Steph?"

Closing her eyes against a wave of misery, she said softly, "I understand."

Jase left her alone and she got lost in her thoughts for a while trying to comprehend what was happening. Was he dead? Wouldn't she feel it? Were the last hours they spent here the last they would ever have?

Unwilling to go down that road any further, she climbed out of bed to find Jase. He was slumped in front of the laptop and so focused on his task that he didn't really acknowledge her.

Stepping behind him, she saw that he was entering a series of codes to presumably open some program. A page of gibberish popped up which meant nothing to Stephanie, but clearly meant something to Jase. "Fuck."

She frowned at the screen. "What?"

Turning to her, Jase said, "Looks like you're gonna get your wish. You have ten minutes to pack. Our location has been compromised."


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

Jase leaned across the console between them and yanked the steering wheel sharply to the right.

"Hey! Who's driving?" Stephanie yelled, reasserting control of the wheel once they passed the oncoming SUV.

"I am, Mario, as soon as you pull over. You might have a death wish right now, but I sure the hell don't."

Stephanie's lips thinned as she shot a glare at Jase.

"Eyes on the road, Princess. And could you try to make it at least appear that you're driving on the right side?"

"There is no right or left. It's all middle!" she spat. "How is it even legal to construct roads this narrow? And what's with all the blind turns? Nothing says 'Welcome to Gatlinburg, Tennessee' like tumbling down a mountain to your spectacular death."

"The trees would probably stop you after thirty feet or so. And we're not as close to Gatlinburg as you think. Turn left up there," Jase said, indicating a gravel road around the next curve.

They had driven nearly two days straight, only pulling over for food and bathroom breaks. Jase hadn't wanted to deal with the hassles of motels and IDs, though they'd brought extra IDs, corresponding credit cards and the wad of cash from the safe with them. They took turns sleeping while the other drove, although Jase never seemed to actually sleep. He slept like a cat, eyes blinking open at the slightest unexpected movement or sound.

After Jase barked out a few more colorful profanities in between directional commands, Stephanie found herself at the bottom of a steeply pitched gravel drive.

"You need to back up and get a running start to make it up the driveway."

Stephanie eyed the driveway, glanced at the cabin at the top of the hill, then back at the driveway. "I don't think that's necessary. How hard can it be?"

Flooring the accelerator, the car only made it about ten feet before the tires started spinning, sending rocks shooting towards the trees and the undercarriage of the car. Stephanie started pumping the gas pedal. The car went a few more feet, pivoted to the right and then the awful smell of burning tires began permeating the interior of the car.

"Jesus Christ, Stephanie. Stop!" Jase shook his head. "Do you know nothing about stealth?"

Stephanie eased off the gas, let the car slide down the hill a bit before depressing the brake. Putting the car in park, she set the emergency brake and opened her door.

"Where the hell are you going?"

She leaned back into the car and grabbed her purse. "If you know anything about me, you should know about my car karma. I'm doing us both a favor." Leaving the driver's side door hanging open, she picked her way up the drive, climbed the porch steps and sat in a rocker.

Stephanie collapsed on the sofa and watched as Jase made several trips to bring their baggage in. He had told her to pack only a week's worth of clothes and he did the same. From the bunker, he brought a few supplies, namely the medical kit, her toiletries, and their lifeline, the laptop. She'd stuffed several of Ranger's unlaundered shirts into large zip lock bags and then shoved them in the bottom of her duffle. She wasn't entirely sure if it was healthy or unhealthy to want to preserve his scent, but she didn't particularly care. She would take any little piece of him that she could.

When they'd passed through the last large town, they had stopped at a 24-hour Target for groceries and a two disposable cell phones. Jase was unsure whether this particular safe house was equipped with a satellite phone or if Ranger provided a new phone whenever he or someone under his protection used the cabin. Jase was pleased to see that the house did have a wireless modem.

After he put the groceries away, he pulled the laptop out of its protective case and set it on the desk in the den. Flipping the screen open, Jase booted up the computer. Stephanie had been sitting on the sofa watching as he put things away and set up his work station. When she realized he was about to check in on the message board, she stood up, pillow dropping to the floor. She knew her period of denial of Ranger's status was limited. To distract herself, she decided now was a good time to investigate the cabin.

The structure was a true split-log style cabin. The floors were a rustic pine and the walls were rough-hewn. An enormous fieldstone fireplace dominated the largest wall and the stonework went all the way to the open-beamed ceiling. There was a large picture window in the den, but the blinds were drawn. She fingered two slats of the blinds apart. The glass looked unusual and she wondered briefly if it was bulletproof. Knowing Ranger, it probably was.

The kitchen was open to the den and just held the basics: refrigerator, stove, sink, microwave. There was no dishwasher or garbage disposal. A scarred oak table and four chairs dominated the center of the kitchen area. One wall had a door she thought was a pantry, but upon opening it, found a stackable washer and dryer instead.

Closing the door, she walked down a short hall. There was a door to the right and one to the left; the linen closet was straight ahead. When she opened the door on the left, she found a bare mattress and box spring on the floor. A small lamp sat on a crate arranged next to the bed. There was a thrift store quality dresser on the far wall. Two transom style windows near the ceiling on two walls provided the only natural light to the room.

Jase startled her when he came in behind her. "I think there's an escape hatch in the floor." He bent and lifted the tattered braided rug at the foot of the bed. He ran his fingers around the edges of the hatch and found a subtle lip where he could lodge his fingers. He flipped something in the lip and she heard a sound like a magnetic lock release. Lifting the hatch, they both looked down and saw the raw earth a few feet beneath the house. "That's actually a camouflaged board covering a hole. It's a tunnel that leads out about 1000 feet into the woods. It's dirty and full of bugs, but it'll get you out of here if we're under attack. It's risky to go out through the tunnel if someone is watching the perimeter of the house, but it beats being a sitting duck. In theory, the access is secure from the outside."

Stephanie sat back on her heels and watched as Jase lowered the hatch again then covered it with the rug. Gnawing at her lip, she said, "How long do we have to stay here?"

He stood and rubbed the back of his neck. "Not long, I hope. There's a modem but I can't get more than one bar of connectivity right now so I can't get online to the message board. No guarantees they're in a location or situation they can connect either. I left a message with Cal at Rangeman but he won't say anything other than 'Tank is unavailable for an undisclosed amount of time.' I didn't get the vibe that Cal or anyone else at Rangeman knew anything about Ranger's, uh, possible status. And honestly, with the exception of Tank, no one at Rangeman knows who the fuck I am. Ranger keeps me very separate from the rest of his life."

"I thought you were close friends."

"Princess, in our business, when you have close friends with a knack for invisibility and morally questionable skills, you keep them hidden. They're your trump card."

Stephanie looked down at her lap. "Did he ever talk about me?"

Jase sat on the edge of the bed and studied her for a moment. At length he said, "He's a very private man. I read the papers. I heard things. I put two and two together. Whenever we would talk, I'd rag him about having a hard-on for Calamity Jane. He would always shut me down. Get defensive. I read between the lines.

"But all I had to do was see how he looked at you, see how he's moved heaven and earth to protect you to know with certainty that he was in love with you."

Stephanie's lower lip curled out of its own accord and a tear rolled down her cheek. Jase made no move to comfort her; just gave her space to either let it out or pull herself together. A minute passed, Stephanie wiped her eyes and sniffed. "You really don't have a clue how to comfort a person, do you?"

Jase's clear blue eyes stared back at her dispassionately. "I can't allow emotional attachment."

She laughed humorlessly and said, "I didn't ask you to kiss my tears away and fall in love with me. Most men would at least attempt to hold a crying woman, even if it was just to shut her up. You held me once, at the bunker. Would it kill you to hold me again?"

Jase stood from the bed and looked down at her with hard eyes. "Stephanie, you have baggage and you have teeth and I'm pretty sure you come with invisible strings and slipknots. I'll take care you, I'll protect you, but I can't do my job if I get attached to you. It's just the way it has to be."

After dinner that night, Stephanie sat on the couch and stared blankly at the TV. Jase watched with her for a while but would get up intermittently to attempt to connect to the Internet. Every time she watched him walk to the desk, a lump of fear would settle in her stomach and she felt as if she couldn't breathe. After about an hour, she excused herself and took a shower. In the bedroom, she slipped on panties and one of Ranger's unlaundered shirts, then made up the bed and attempted to fall asleep.

For a while, all she could do was fixate on the knowledge that there was a trapdoor at the foot of her bed. Jase said it couldn't be breached from the outside, but what did he know? She climbed out of the bed and dragged the mattress over the trapdoor. She convinced herself that if she needed to get out that way, moving the mattress would only be adding seconds onto her escape.

An hour passed and she couldn't stop thinking of Ranger. Her Carlos. In the past few days she continually went back and forth between refusing to believe he was gone and wondering if she had lost him forever.

The Ranger she knew would have planned his attack to the nth degree, with no room for error. He would be cautious and swift. And this wasn't just any mission, something he was doing for the government, or to return a favor or line his pockets. This was a mission he was executing for her. For them. For his loved ones. He wouldn't dare die now that they finally had their chance. Would he? No, he wouldn't die now; he couldn't. Could he?

And that was when deep sadness rolled over her, crashing down on her like a wave and wrenching her further and further from the distant shores of hope. They finally had their chance. They could have had their chance much sooner. She went over and over things he'd done for her and said to her that she purposely misinterpreted or refused to hear just because it was easier. It was easier to believe that he only wanted her in his bed, had nothing more to offer her, felt nothing more than sexual attraction and some misguided affection. It was easier because it would mean she wouldn't have to think, to ask questions, to risk herself, to risk everything, to choose.

What would her life be like now? Would she return to Trenton, a shell of herself as an invisible Jase watched over her with resentful eyes? Or would Jase drag her around like a gypsy from safe house to safe house? He'd regard her as some ball and chain strapped to his ankle, making him hate her even more, making him regret that stupid promise he made to Carlos.

Perhaps she'd return and no one would look for her if he were dead. They would have made their point, wouldn't they? He would have paid the ultimate price. But then again, if he were dead and whoever wasn't brought to some kind of justice, she'd live this side of witness protection for the rest of her life.

She thought about Julie, and Ranger's parents and siblings. How could she ever look them in the eye knowing that she was the reason Ranger was gone? Here she was, practically a widow to a man she would never marry, and she couldn't expect comfort from the arms of the people who loved him most.

She thought back to their first meeting at the downtown café. She used reflect on specific moments in her life when she felt fate had stepped in and something extraordinary happened. That day was one of those predestined meetings. How could he have ever known that by agreeing to meet her, he was going to meet his own angel of death?

Wiping her face, she stood from the bed, tugged down Ranger's shirt and went out to the den. Jase had opened the sofa bed and it was already made up with sheets, a blanket and two pillows. He was sitting at the bottom edge in only his jeans, staring into the fire. A floorboard creaked under her feet.

Without turning, Jase said, "Couldn't sleep?"

Stephanie flopped on the sofa bed and curled around a pillow. "His parents will hate me. I stole Julie's father from her. They won't want me at the funeral. What will Ranger think if I'm not at his funeral?"

Jase hung his head and sighed. "Nobody is going to hate you. Would you hate Julie if he died protecting her? Would you hate his parents if he died protecting them? What about Tank, or Lester, or any of his men; what if he died protecting them?"

"That's different."

"How?"

"They're his family. Even the guys."

"And you're not?"

"I was just his lover. And just for a short time."

Shaking his head, Jase said, "That man lived and breathed for you. I don't know how you can't see that. His family will know that just by virtue of how and why he died. They could never resent you for that, just as you wouldn't resent them if he had died for them."

Stephanie didn't say anything after that. Jase said, "I thought you didn't believe he was dead."

"I thought I would feel it if he died."

Jase stood, stirred the fire one more time, and closed the screen. Then he flopped down beside Stephanie on the bed.

They both lay in silence for a long stretch. Softly, Jase said, "If he's gone, at least you know it wasn't his choice to leave you. There are lots of empty people in this world who have lost their loved ones to things other than death. Sometimes people amputate someone from their lives, either knowingly or unknowingly. The victim has to walk around and go on living knowing that they were left because someone made a choice against them. That's not the case with you and Carlos. Carlos chose you."

Stephanie burbled out, "That's supposed to make me feel better? He chose me? He got killed because of his choice; he made the wrong choice!"

Jase heaved a sigh and rolled to his side, dragging Stephanie into the curve of his body. He waited patiently for her private storm to pass, stroking her hair and her back. When she had calmed enough to hear him, he said, "Carlos was a proud man who would only accept an honorable death. If he couldn't die of old age, in bed beside you, he would have accepted only two other options. Death for his country, or death protecting someone he loves. It's the ultimate unselfish act. If he's gone, he gave his life freely for you. No price."

She sucked in a breath. "Did he…? He's said that to me before—no price. Is that some Army motto or mercenary credo?"

He chuckled into her hair. "Princess, the mercenary credo is 'Exorbitant price, no names exchanged, no credit cards accepted.' _No price_ is the rate of currency and definition of unqualified, unconditional love."

Stephanie woke when a log on the fire cracked loudly and shifted. When she opened her eyes, she could make out the smooth skin of Jase's back; she must have spooned around him in her sleep. Scooting a few inches away, she flipped over her pillow and settled in again, tugging the blanket more securely over her shoulder. It was then that she noticed the sharp pins and needles sensation at the base of her neck.

Flopping to her back, her heart went into her throat when she saw the silhouette of an imposing figure standing between the foot of the sofa bed and the fireplace.

Stephanie kicked out at Jase's leg and scuttled back as far on the mattress as she could before hauling a leg over the back of the couch and dropping behind it. As soon as she kicked Jase's leg, he jerked to alertness, pulling a gun from under his pillow, releasing the safety and leveling it on the intruder.

Tucked down behind the couch, Stephanie was acutely aware of the lack of movement and the absence of words exchanged between the men. Then again, she could hardly hear her own breathing over the roar of her heartbeat pounding in her ears. The next sound she heard confused her: the sound of Jase reengaging the safety.

"It's okay, Princess. It's a good guy."

Stephanie hesitantly stood from behind the couch, looking at Jase first. He angled out of the bed, stretching his body in a long line, arms above his head. Then he walked over to the chair, presenting his back to the intruder, picked up his shirt and tugged it over his head.

Stephanie slowly turned her head toward the unknown man. Her eyes more accustomed now to the low level of light, she could see the intruder more clearly. It was Ranger.

Stephanie staggered a moment before clutching the back of the couch. "Oh, God."

Backlit by the low firelight, Ranger's facial expression was difficult to discern. She stumbled around the couch and walked up to him, unaware of her feet beneath her. Hesitantly she put her hands on his hard chest to feel the contours of his muscles, the warmth of his skin beneath his shirt. Moving one of her hands to the center of his chest, she closed her eyes and reveled in the steady thud of his heart against her hand. Resting her forehead between her hands, she breathed him in. He stood stiffly for a moment, then pulled her into his chest possessively.

Stephanie whispered, "You're here. You're-"

Ranger interrupted in a voice filled with tension. "Why are you here?" She wasn't sure if he was talking to her or to Jase. "What happened to the phone?" he asked harshly. "I'm on my way back to you and I see your tracker moving away. I call the satellite phone and it rings endlessly. Do you have any idea what was running through my mind?" His voice until then had been hard and flat. The next thing he said came out as a shout. "I thought someone breached the Goddamned bunker!"

She startled at his shout and dropped her hands. She looked up at Ranger and was frightened by the blank face that barely concealed his frustration and fury.

"Back off, Carlos." Apparently, Jase had heard enough.

Ranger glared at him. Jase stepped menacingly toward Ranger, shoving Stephanie behind him in the process. "She thought you were fucking dead. Everybody thought you were dead. Your core team is in Mexico, as we speak, looking for your body."

Ranger's face creased into an expression of condescending incredulousness. "Explain."

Jase grabbed for Ranger's wrist and twisted so that the inside was visible, then pressed his fingers against the fleshy part of his upper arm. "Your bio data reported you dead two days ago."

Ranger jerked his arm back and leveled a lethal look at Jase. "That still doesn't explain what you two are doing here, curled up on a sofa bed together."

Jase butted his chest into Ranger's and snarled, "You need to come off your GI Joe testosterone high and listen to me. Right now, your woman is praising Jesus you're alive. She's been going back and forth between mourning you and insisting you're not dead. She's been through an emotional fucking nightmare. And you just pop in here and start throwing out reprimands and accusations. Don't think I didn't catch that nasty little insinuation you just tossed in. She loves you. I'm your fucking friend. You're lucky I'm feeling charitable right now or I'd smash your Goddamn skull into the fireplace just for being an idiot." The fire seemed to go out of Ranger's eyes almost instantly. Jase lowered his voice and said, "I received intel that our location had been compromised. We needed to move. Was I wrong?"

Raking his fingers through his hair, Ranger sat heavily on the hearth. Stephanie stepped back until she bumped into the kitchen table. Jase stayed right where he was, staring at Ranger, waiting for an explanation.

Ranger stared down at his hands where they hung between his splayed thighs. "Santiago is in the States. Very likely he's close. It looks like he played the game well, leaked his location for the purpose of drawing me out and away from Stephanie. I made a rookie mistake moving so quickly."

Listening quietly, Stephanie wrapped her arms around her body. She said, "Tank didn't tell you they were in Mexico looking for your … body?"

Ranger closed his eyes a moment as if mentally kicking his own ass. "No. The last time I talked to Tank was three days ago which would have been before my, for lack of a better word, death. I had to ditch the phone I was using once I realized the mission had been compromised."

Jase shook his head and sat on the bed to lace up his boots. "We did the same. You need a better communication relay system. The one you've got going now sucks ass."

Ranger shot Jase a glare. "You don't think I've realized that?"

Stephanie walked over to Ranger and kneeled between his thighs. His eyes showed everything he felt for her, but his posture looked tired, defeated.

He raised his hand and stroked her cheek with his knuckles. In a harsh whisper, he said, "I love you, Stephanie. And I'd like nothing more than to sneak you out of here myself. But I have to do my job."

Grasping his face with both hands, she said, " _You_ listen to _me_. I'm not helpless and I'm not completely untrained. And _nobody,_ not one of us, should function without a partner. Jase will have your back. _I_ have your back. I'm not leaving you."

Ranger looked ready to argue but before he could get the first word out, there was a loud crack against the window not four feet away from them and Stephanie found herself on her back, pinned underneath Ranger's body.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

When Stephanie's skull smacked against the hardwood floor, she saw stars. Giving her head a quick shake, she looked up and saw that Ranger was very much alert, braced over her protectively, and pulling a gun from behind his back.

He glanced down at her and said, "You okay?"

Another gunshot cracked against the window making her jump.

From his position on the floor across from them, Jase muttered, "Sniper rifle."

Ranger hooked his foot through the straps of his duffle near the fireplace and dragged it within arm's reach. Absently soothing the back of Stephanie's head where she bumped it, he used his free hand to unzip the bag and begin hauling out his cache of weapons and ammo. He pulled out a nasty looking rifle, in pieces, and slid them across the floor to Jase, along with the corresponding ammo. Then he pulled out something Stephanie recognized; a Sig Sauer.

Pressing it into her hand, he reached back into the duffle and pulled out two extra magazines. Setting them down on the floor near them, he pushed up enough to allow her room to breathe. When he made no move away from her, she said, "What?"

Frowning at her, he said, "You're wearing a t-shirt and panties."

"And?"

"Where are you going to tuck your gun and the magazines?"

Jase glanced up from where he was laying, belly down, quickly assembling his rifle. "She doesn't have a lot of options, but I'm looking forward to the show."

Stephanie flipped Jase the bird then turned over and began crawling away from Ranger, unaware that her t-shirt was hiked above her panties.

"Jesus, Steph," Ranger hissed out, pulling her shirt down, then grabbing her ankle to stop her. "Where are you going?"

A quick succession of bullets ricocheted off another window, this time it sounded like the bathroom.

"Fuck," Ranger sighed. "We've got at least two out there. Steph, grab a Kevlar vest out of Jase's bag and get dressed as fast as you can. Stay down. Wear long sleeves and jeans. Don't forget shoes." He yanked at her ankle and pulled her back under him, flipped her over and kissed the daylights out of her.

Dazed, Stephanie struggled to formulate a coherent thought.

Forehead touching hers, he looked into her eyes and said, "You know where the trapdoor is?" At her nod, he continued. "Go through the trapdoor. Wave an object through the opening before you climb down. If someone is watching under the house, they'll shoot at the object. If nothing happens, you need to get into the tunnel. Pull the cover back over once you're in. There's a piece of camouflaged plywood over the other end and it's also covered with some rocks and dirt. You should be able to dislodge it using your feet, but you need to be quiet about it."

Listening to him dole out his instructions so efficiently seemed surreal to Stephanie. It was then that she noticed the elevation of her heart rate, her breathing and that hyper-aware and energized sensation zinging through her veins; good old adrenalin. She knew she should be terrified, but Ranger's bearing and command calmed her. She also knew that giving in to her fears would only hinder her. She needed to tamp down her emotions and focus on the goal. Locking eyes with Ranger, she asked, "What about you?"

"I'll find you."

"What if-"

"Babe."

"Okay," she sighed. "Do you have a flashlight in your bag of tricks?"

"I do, but they'll be able to see you if you use it."

"Crap."

"Stephanie, go. Please."

Stephanie began crawling away, muttering, "Sir, yes sir."

...

After getting dressed and armed, Stephanie belly crawled her way back out into the hall, overhearing Ranger and Jase's matter-of-fact conversation.

Ranger said, "You _had_ to have a fuckin' fire tonight."

Unaware she was watching them, Jase pulled on a Kevlar vest and tossed Ranger his. Jase quipped, "It gets a little nippy in the mountains, Carlos. So sue me."

Ranger said, "The chimney was custom built to double as a sniper turret of sorts. It's reinforced, more so than the walls and windows and the chimney cap hangs extra low and has titanium backing. I'd tell you to shimmy your ass up there and take the guy in the front out, but the whole burning alive thing kinda fucks up that plan."

"So we put the fire out," Steph chimed in. "It's been barely flickering for over an hour, the chimney can't be that hot anymore."

The pained expression of a long-suffering man slid over Ranger's face. Through clenched teeth, he said, "Sweetheart. I thought I told you to get in the tunnel."

Stephanie smiled sweetly at Ranger. "Darling, I was just going to suggest we use the fire extinguisher," throwing a pointed look at the red canister on the wall above her, "and put the fire out. No big plume of black smoke."

Jase cut in, "They might notice the lack of regular chimney smoke."

Giving Stephanie a respectful nod, Ranger said, "They may have noticed you had a fire going on their initial reconnaissance, but I doubt they're paying attention to it now. Besides, it's dark and there's a lot of cloud cover. Good plan, Babe."

At this point, none of them were visibly reacting to the sporadic burst of bullets against the cabin. Steph eased up close to the wall and removed the fire extinguisher, her hand trembling. Yes, she was terrified. But the men appeared calm. She needed to be calm. Think clearly. She snaked her way over to the fireplace, the canister tucked to her side. She said, "Is it just me, or are they not trying very hard?"

Ranger said, "My guess is they're hoping to force us outside. He doesn't want to take anyone out at a distance. This is too personal. He wants me face to face." He added gravely, "He wants us alive for now."

Ranger slid over to the kitchen, slowly stood in the corner near the sink, and removed a decorative plate from the wall, exposing a hidden cut out. Removing the square of faux log, he then pulled out a plate of metal, a brick of cinderblock and then the outer piece of faux log.

Watching him, Jase snorted. "Is this a fucking a castle?"

Smiling grimly as he nosed this rifle through the opening clearly designed for such a purpose, Ranger replied, "Kinda, sorta. No parapet and no mote. Too obvious."

"No murder holes?" Jase shot back.

"Takes too long to boil the oil," was Ranger's bland reply.

Stephanie was a little surprised at their light banter. She supposed they were very much in their element right now and the commentary was a subconscious way to ease the tension for them.

As soon as Stephanie extinguished the fire, Jase called over to Ranger, "Got some hot pads?"

Elbows propped on the counter and eyes focused through the site of his rifle, Ranger reached blindly into the drawer at his hip and pulled out an industrial strength oven mitt and tossed it over his shoulder in the general direction of the den. Jase chuckled, "You've got an Ove Glove! Sweet!"

Stephanie grabbed up the mitt and slapped Jase upside the head with it. "Focus!" She couldn't take the joking anymore.

Jase put the mitt on and carefully slid the foamy grate from the fireplace and out onto the oversized hearth, then pushed it to the side. He peered up the unusually wide chimney shaking his head. "I'm gonna get all sooty and shit." Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, he angled his body in and started shimmying up. "Not hot, my ass!" he hissed. Once his boots disappeared, Stephanie turned back to Ranger.

"What do you need me to do?"

Ranger said, "I really need for you to get in the tunnel."

"I want to help you."

"You have. Stephanie, Santiago wants _you_. Alive. I need him to think you're still in here while you sneak past him underground."

"Then what?"

"Then I kill these assholes."

"And?"

Rubbing his forehead against the butt of his rifle, he said, "And then I find you."

Moments of silence ticked by before she said, "Okay."

"That easy? Just 'okay'?"

"Well, that and … I love you."

He looked over his shoulder at her then, his eyes soft. "I love you, too, querida."

Sliding back across the floor toward away from Ranger, Stephanie stopped before she reached the hall. "Carlos?"

"Mmmm?"

"Godspeed."

Ranger was silent a moment. In a gruff voice he replied, "See you on the other side."

…

Pushing the mattress and box spring aside, Stephanie squatted and slid her fingers in the grove exactly as Jase had. Feeling the latch, she triggered it and slowly lifted the door. Since the room was already dark, she didn't have to worry about casting a square of light beneath the house. Unfortunately, that also meant she couldn't see the ground beneath her, or any creepy crawlies she might disturb.

Remembering Ranger's words, she grabbed a pillow from the bed, stuffed it into a dark shirt and lowered it through the hole. Nothing. She moved it up and down gingerly, simulating a person climbing out. She heard shots, but they were the same as before, nothing that seemed to be aimed under the house.

She pulled the pillow back up and tossed it aside. Tucking the extra ammo in her back pockets and making sure the gun was secure at the small of her back, Stephanie peeked her head through cautiously and scanned for feet. Clear. Lying on her belly, she bent forward at the waist and reached blindly down to the ground, relieved when she felt dirt. She ran her fingers to the sides and felt a spurt of satisfaction when she caught an edge of plywood. In increments, she slid the wood to the side, careful to make no sound. Once the opening was big enough, she pulled back up into the bedroom and flipped over to her bottom. There was absolutely no way she was going into the nasty tunnel headfirst.

Easing herself down into the ground, she glanced around again, then reached up to close the trapdoor behind her. At the last minute, she stood up and leaned out of the trapdoor and into the bedroom and dragged the rug to tent over the door. She only hoped it would fall flat enough once she lowered the door so that she didn't give the escape route away.

Back in the hole, she quietly slid the board back over the opening, cutting off the little remaining light she had. Holy cannoli, it was dark. There was just enough room to turn around and begin moving forward through the earthen tunnel. She didn't allow herself to think of the bugs, rodents or lizards she might be sharing her egress with. She just needed to focus on the goal.

It had to be at least ten degrees cooler in the tunnel. She could still hear sporadic gunfire, but she wasn't sure if the change in the sound of gunfire was because of the muffled acoustics or if it meant that Ranger and Jase were returning fire.

She paused a moment, her heart clenching. _Please let Carlos be okay. Let them both be okay._

Bumping into the wall in front of her for the third time, she realized the tunnel wasn't a straight line from entry to exit. It seemed curve left and right every four feet or so, in a serpentine pattern. She supposed it was a protective measure in case someone was in the tunnel in front or behind you, not allowing a straight shot. In a moment of levity, she decided that if Ranger ever wanted to hole her up in this safe house again, she would insist on memorizing the convolutions of the tunnel so she could improve her time. At the very least, she wouldn't feel like such an idiot.

Time became impossible to judge. It felt like she had been slithering through this never-ending hole for hours but she suspected it was no more than ten minutes. She estimated she was close to the center because she could no longer hear gunshots. Pausing briefly, she relaxed on her stomach and laid her head against her crossed arms. She wondered if it was already over. Had Jase taken out the sniper? Had Ranger, once and for all, silenced Santiago?

Something long, with far too many legs skittered across her hand. Barely repressing a shriek, Stephanie surged forward with new motivation to get to the other end of the tunnel.

Eventually, she butted her head against the last wall. She knew it was the last wall because of the hallow sound it made connecting with her head, and because it lifted slightly. Crap. What if the bad guy was on the other side?

Again, the area at the base of the tunnel was larger, so she was able to swivel around to her bottom and gently push the board away using her legs. Bracing her hands behind her, she pushed her feet to the right cautiously, stopping when the opening was large enough to slide through. Anxious to get the hell out of Dodge, she climbed out, headfirst this time, barely stopping herself from sliding down the slight incline beneath, which was covered with layers of damp leaves.

She replaced the plywood, scooped some extra leaves and branches over the top and crawled about thirty feet in the darkness to the nearest tree, rocks and twigs biting into her knees and palms. Just as she had stood up, she heard a gunshot nearby and dropped to a crouch. There was a second gunshot, and this time, she saw the flash that accompanied it.

Drawing her gun from behind her back, she began to back further away from the direction of the cabin. But then she became confused. The reports from the various guns were coming from different directions. Falling back on the little training she had, she took a defensive stance with her gun two-handed in front of her, turning this way and that as she backed toward the next nearest tree.

The next sound she heard was the sharp snap of a fallen branch cracking to her right. She pivoted and slipped, going down on one knee. Standing again and keeping her gun trained ahead of her with shaking hands, she peered into the darkness.

She heard a heavy whisper carry across the forest. "Stephanie, honey, it's me. It's Carlos. Put the gun down."

Was it Ranger? It was hard to tell. There was no accent. She assumed Santiago would have an accent. Then again, the man was no fool. He'd know to speak with an American accent. But then, he was whispering, so who could tell? She shifted fractionally, tightening her grip on the Sig Sauer, gun still aimed in the direction of the voice.

Ranger didn't call her honey. He called her Babe, or Stephanie, or Steph. Recently, he'd called her sweetheart or querida. But not honey.

"Carlos," she hissed into the woods.

A disembodied voice hissed back, "It's me. You need to put the gun down now. It's safe."

Though she tried to stay focused, a myriad of thoughts raced through her head. Was this a trick? What if it wasn't Ranger? How could she know for sure?

"Do you remember how we met?" she asked, proud that her voice sounded confident and strong when she felt neither of those things.

"Stephanie. Now is not the time," he rasped.

Okay. That would be something Ranger would say. But if this was Ranger and they were safe, what was the rush?

"Do you remember what I was wearing?"

"Stephanie! Enough nonsense." It was a whisper-shout. Something Ranger would do.

She zeroed in as close as she could to where the voice had come from. Then she said, "Was I at the bar alone or with friends?"

There was a muttered curse, then an urgent whisper, "Stephanie, when I walked into that bar-"

She shot four times in quick succession, the recoil jerking her back. There was a muzzle flash just to her left, a sharp, stinging pain in her neck, then she fell back, cracked her head, and it was lights out.


	16. Chapter 16

A/N: This is the final chapter!

 **Chapter 16**

The first thing Stephanie became aware of was touch, a stroke of her cheek, the skimming back of her hair. Then there was sound, a soft murmur in a rich, deep voice as familiar to her as her own. A second masculine voice came to her; only it was curt, not quite as deep, and a further distance away. The two voices didn't seem to be holding the same conversation.

The closer, deeper voice said, "Stephanie. Open your eyes." The voice held an edge of authority, but it also seemed anxious and so worried. She really wanted to open her eyes and assure the speaker that she was fine … but damn, her head was hurting and the side of her neck felt like it was on fire.

" _Stephanie_." Ugh. He wasn't giving up.

"Mmmm." Okay. Mouth not in working order. Maybe she should just go back to sleep…

There was a sensation of a cool hand smoothing across her forehead, followed by the delightful feeling of a soft kiss on her cheek and a light scrape of stubble on her face. She knew it was Ranger even before he said, "Babe. Now. Open your eyes for me."

And she did. Holy cow, he looked rough. His brows were furrowed, the creases near his eyes were deeper than she had ever seen them and his mouth was hard and serious. But his eyes … oh his eyes made her go all soft inside. They seemed to convey relief and tenderness along with assurance that everything was going to be okay.

Suddenly everything came back. Ranger wasn't dead. That thought gave her such joy that it calmed her for a moment. Then she flashed on the assault against the cabin, the terror she wouldn't allow herself to drown in at the time, the adrenalin, the tunnel, the faceless man who said he was Ranger. Everything came back to her in vivid detail. That was when body began to hum, causing her to shiver and vibrate like a human tuning fork. Her teeth chattering, she realized she was very cold. Curling into herself, she rolled to the side and closed her eyes. _Not ready for this_.

There was a sound of Velcro ripping, then Ranger shifted around and laid something across her torso. A shirt? He finger-combed her hair away from her face and hooked a section of it behind her shoulder. "Stephanie, you can't go to sleep. Aside from the fact you're lying in the woods with your head in my lap, you probably have a concussion."

"But my head hurts." She frowned realizing how petulant and child-like she sounded.

"Babe, I know it does. Jase is on the phone with the authorities now. I can't imagine they're not already halfway here with all the gunfire exchanged in the last forty-five minutes. An ambulance should be here soon."

Resigned, Stephanie flopped to her back again and raised her hands to massage her temples. Even in the dark, she could see that Ranger looked tired. "Is it over?" she asked.

Nodding once, he said, "Jase took care of Santiago's partner just minutes after you left. It was far cleaner than the man deserved. We'll have to wait until the bullets are retrieved and the ballistics analysis comes back, but it looks like you took care of Santiago all on your own."

"Was that you behind me?"

He gave her another single nod. "Jase was about twenty yards behind Santiago so it's a good thing your aim was true." His voice was tight and she knew he was imagining how differently things could have turned out. Shifting a bit so that he could bend to kiss the tip of her nose, he said gruffly, "You amaze me."

She could hear the distant wail of sirens but she knew it was a long circuitous trek up the mountain so they had a few more minutes alone. The stinging of her neck became a more pronounced throbbing and she moved her hand to feel for the wound. Ranger caught her wrist before she could investigate the source of pain. "No, Babe. Don't touch. You don't want it to get infected."

"Was I shot?"

Loosening his hold on her wrist, Ranger entwined her shaking fingers with his. "Very nearly." The tone in his voice left no doubt that it was a little too close for his comfort. "You caught some tree shrapnel."

Through chattering teeth, she said, "I what?"

"His bullet lodged in the tree behind you. Your neck caught a few shards of bark. It's gonna need to be cleaned and there might still be splinters of wood under the skin."

"Why does my head feel like I've been on a three-day bender?"

She was watching his face. He looked a little disgusted with himself. "When you jerked back from the recoil, I stepped a little to the side to take my own shot. You either lost your balance or slipped. After I was sure Santiago was down, I looked over and saw you in a heap. You must have cracked your head against the tree."

"Stupid tree," she muttered.

He cracked a smile at that. Serious again, he said, "Better a tree than a bullet. It probably doesn't help that you cracked your head on the hardwood floor when I covered you back at the cabin." A dose of self-imposed guilt was laced through his words.

Jase jogged over with a quilt from the cabin tucked under one arm and a flashlight in his other hand. Dropping to his knees across from Ranger, he shook out the blanket to cover Stephanie's shivering form and handed Ranger the shirt he had draped over her. Jase grinned at her and said, "Nice shootin', Tex."

She frowned at him and his trademark smirk, which looked a bit eerie in the glow of the flashlight. "Thanks. But I'm not used to you being nice to me. It's a little weird. You can stop now," she said.

One side of his mouth kicked up a fraction. "You're just shocky. You don't even realize you're talking nonsense." It was then that she saw that he had a bottle of peroxide and a sealed packet of gauze.

Stephanie rolled away from Jase and whined to Ranger, "Make him go away. He's mean."

Chuckling, Ranger gently grasped her shoulders and nudged her over on her back once again, then pulled the tangles of her hair out of the way for Jase.

As Jase drizzled peroxide over the side of her neck, Ranger began talking in a low, hypnotic cadence. "That was smart of you to test him, querida."

Even in her semi-altered post battle state, Stephanie knew that Ranger was _so_ trying to distract her from the icy cold liquid turned molten lava that Jase was pouring over her wound. And the ploy wasn't working. Much.

"I remember exactly what you were wearing when we first met at that diner," said Ranger, squeezing her hand.

Through narrowed eyes, Stephanie watched as Jase industriously applied half a tube of antibiotic ointment over a square of gauze. He muttered, "Christ, do I even want to hear this?"

Ignoring the peanut gallery, Ranger said, "You were wearing a suit with a silky red blouse. I'm pretty sure you had it unbuttoned so low in concession to the heat, but I appreciated it all the same."

Jase made an odd sound in the back of his throat.

She shifted her glare to Ranger, ignoring his wolfish grin. "Ranger. Stop," she gritted through clenched teeth as she cast a pointed look towards Jase.

Jase said, "Yeah, man. Seriously. I really don't need to hear this shit. It's like listening to my dad getting frisky with my mom." He mimed gagging. Then he gently laid the gauze against her neck.

Ranger plowed on undeterred. "You weren't wearing any pantyhose. Made me wonder what else you weren't wearing under your skirt."

Jase made pained faces as he picked up his supplies. He said, "I'm gonna leave you kids here to make cow eyes at each other. I'll be at the bottom of the driveway directing traffic and planning my lobotomy."

Just before Jase disappeared into the darkness of the forest, Ranger hollered, "Got your Federal ID handy?"

His disembodied voice called back, "Yes, Dad."

Turning his focus back to Stephanie, Ranger's expression was much more serious now. She could see his thoughts shifting and feel the subtle tensing of his thighs beneath her head. Solemnly, he said, "We have a lot to talk about, Steph."

He sounded so serious. Had he changed his mind about wanting her in his life after seeing firsthand how everything could go to hell in a hand basket? Did he think the risk was too high? Hiking the quilt over her shoulder and curling into herself, Steph said, "Can it wait?"

He was silent for a beat, then said, "Yeah. They might want to take you to the hospital to check your head. And we have a lot of questions to answer when the state police get here."

Just then, the intermittent blue and red strobes broke through the trees, alerting them that reality was closing in. What seemed like a dozen floating flashlight beams bobbed and swayed as they got closer and closer, reminding them that their quiet moment was about to be disrupted.

Panicked, she looked up at Ranger and said, "What do I say?"

Shifting beneath her, he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and said, "The truth. You did nothing but defend yourself tonight and that's true of Jase and me. If they ask you any background questions about Santiago, refer them to me. You don't know him. It was self-defense, Babe."

The army of police officers broke over the last ridge. Stephanie whispered, "I can do this," as if trying to convince herself.

"Of course you can, querida. You're the bravest person I know."

…

The crime scene investigators didn't pull out of the driveway until nearly noon the following day. Once Ranger and Jase's federal connections were confirmed, the atmosphere overall seemed to lose some of the tension and intensity. Jase had agreed to run into town to make a formal statement while Ranger kept watch over Stephanie, who after passing her neurological tests, refused to go to the hospital. He woke her every two hours and made sure she answered his questions to show she was coherent. She was pretty sure she was coherent every time he woke her, but she knew she was also extremely irritable and short tempered. He didn't really seem to mind.

Jase returned just after five that evening and took over watching her so that Ranger could drive into town and make his formal statement. Stephanie would have to do the same eventually, but as far as Ranger was concerned, the authorities could wait until she'd recovered a little and had some rest. This was one time she appreciated his over-protectiveness.

It was dark when Ranger returned to the cabin. Jase had made dinner and the two of them were eating in companionable silence. Nodding his head to Jase and placing a kiss on Stephanie's head, Ranger went over to the pot on the stove and spooned noodles onto his plate and covered them with a generous portion of stew.

Conversation seemed stilted. Jase and Ranger discussed the red tape that would have to be cut to expedite the closing of the case. And it would be cut. Ranger would see to it.

Thirty minutes later, Jase stood up from the table and stretched. "I'm gonna take off. I booked a room in town near the police station." He glanced pointedly at Ranger. "Walk me out?"

Ranger nodded and stood, following Jase to the door.

…

Stephanie took a shower while Ranger and Jase talked on the porch. She knew there must be things they felt better discussing while she was not present. Slipping into clean panties and one of Ranger's t-shirts, she made her way down the hall and was surprised to see Ranger inside once again, securing the door for the night. He walked silently towards her and stopped when there were only inches between them.

She wanted to look up at him now, to enjoy the moment they didn't have when he'd first arrived. But she was confused. Between last night and tonight she'd had way too much time to ponder conversations they'd had before he left for Mexico. She'd also remembered things he'd said when he first arrived at the cabin. When she didn't look up at him right away, he tugged at one of her curls and softly implored, "Stephanie, sweetheart … please look at me."

It took her a few moments to gather her resolve, then she slowly raised her eyes to his face. He looked tired. So tired. He also looked worried, ashamed, regretful ... and so very beautiful. When she realized that he was allowing her to see so much of what he was feeling, her features crumpled and she sagged against him, her face buried in his chest.

Taking a deep breath, she inhaled his unique scent, his essence, his vitality. She couldn't hold back anymore, the reality of everything hit her all at once. Emotion rushed through like water surging over a levy under too much pressure. Her body wracked with sobs as she let out everything she had been holding back since that morning she thought she lost him.

His arms, those strong arms she thought she had lost forever, pulled her into his body, into his heart, as if he were trying to absorb her pain. Ranger burrowed his face in her hair as he murmured, "Forgive me. I'm so sorry. You have to forgive me." His voice broke at the end of his plea, as though the possibility of not receiving absolution from her would literally destroy him.

But what was he asking forgiveness for? His angry words just last night, when he implied that they might have purposely ignored his request to stay in the bunker? When he let himself wonder, even for a moment, if she had turned to Jase sexually? Or was he asking her to forgive him for the life he wanted her to live if she accepted him? The only life he had to offer?

Turning her head to the side, she shuddered out a deep sigh and said, "I love you."

He stilled. She hadn't realized it at the time, but as she cried he had been slowly rocking her, rocking them both in that familiar sway a parent learns when trying to soothe an inconsolable child. When he didn't say anything, she added, "I … I had to tell you that first. Before we talk about anything else. I didn't know if I would get a chance to tell you again-"

"Shhh, sweetheart." He leaned back slightly to wipe at her tears with his thumbs.

Stephanie looked up and whispered, "I thought you were dead."

"Last night?"

She shook her head. "No. Before."

"I'm right here."

"But the tracker-"

"Failed. It just failed. We'll figure it out later. I'm sorry I put you through that."

He pulled her with him as he stepped back and settled into a low-armed upholstered chair, tugging her into his lap. Gently, he maneuvered her so that she was facing him, her knees pressed into the cushion by his hips. With one hand, he held her upright, his thumb under her ribs, big fingers curled around her side.

His other hand pushed her hair back from her tear-stained face. After he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, he stroked a finger across her lower lip, down her chin, to the hollow of her throat. Then he splayed his hand between her breasts and whispered, "Do you love me enough?"

Couldn't he see her? Wasn't it obvious? How could he possibly doubt the depth of her feelings after all they had gone through?

Grasping her chin, he forced her to look at him. "Stephanie. I can see your mind going a hundred miles a minute, and probably down the wrong road. I love you. I am _in love_ with you. That is never going to change, whether you choose to live some kind of life with me, or if we go our separate ways.

"I will understand if you can't live this life. _I_ don't want to live this life, but I've made my bed and I have no choice. You do. And I wouldn't hold it against you, resent you, or regret you if you tell me to walk away."

"How could you possibly think-"

"I don't _want_ to think in those terms. But I know it's a possibility, a reality I may have to live with. I know how much you'd hate living under what you'd see as restrictions. Wondering when something like this would happen again … it can be mentally draining, even incapacitating. On top of that, last night I exhibited some of my least desirable qualities. I might have a long fuse, but clearly I have a temper. I can be irrationally jealous. I've never been that way before, but I've always felt that way with you. I hate that about myself. I'm bossy, domineering, I give orders instead of asking … and you're supposed to be my lover. Don't think I'm not kicking my own ass for speaking to you that way."

"Is this the part where you ask me to go steady?" she asked. The lack of his smile told her the joke fell flat.

He rubbed his hands over her hips and closed his eyes for a moment. "This is the part where I ask you if you've made your choice."

When he opened his eyes again, they were blank, no emotion. It was clear that he was steeling himself for the answer he didn't want to hear.

It was then that she realized that his blank face gave her every indication of his emotions. It said he was resolved, prepared, vulnerable … afraid.

And that last emotion would have brought her to her knees if she wasn't already on them. Ranger wasn't afraid of much. He'd told her he wasn't afraid to die. But he was deathly afraid that he had already lost her, would have to live without her.

His fears were groundless.

She reached up and smoothed his silky hair away from his eye with her thumb. Then she traced her index finger along the dark arch of one raven's wing brow, an arch she knew women paid good money for in a salon, but for Ranger, it came as a gift from Mother Nature.

"You're so beautiful it almost hurts to look at you," she whispered.

His eyes softened then and he rumbled, "I think the same thing about you."

Her mouth tipped up slightly and she watched her hand float down his stubbled cheek. "We're not the same. You're more beautiful. You just think I'm beautiful because you see me through your heart."

His brow furrowed and his hands tightened on her hips. He took a breath and she knew he was about to defend his opinion so she went on.

"I've said some things to you in anger that I wish I had never said. There are things you can say to a person that can never be taken back. Sometimes they're so hurtful, it's all they can hear, all they will remember. Even if you apologize, it never goes away. Even if you say wonderful, new things to them, and mean them … it's too late."

"Babe-"

She shook her head. "Let me talk. I love you. I don't hate you. I've never hated you. I've never thought you were psychotic or crazy or-"

Smiling softly, he said, "An asshole, a prick or a jerk?"

Gnawing her lip, she looked down at where her hands had settled on his chest. "I've thought that you were acting that way, but I never should have said it. You don't say those kinds of things to the person you call your friend. To the person you love. Not even in anger."

"You were mad at me and scared."

She shook her head. "It's no excuse. But for what it's worth, I apologize. It was beneath me and you didn't deserve it. And I hope that I never say something like that again, but if I do…"

He pulled her in and ran his hands up and down the length of her back, finally settling his palms on her bottom as she tucked her head under his chin.

Clearing her throat, she said, "When I thought you had died … God. I wanted to die too."

Squeezing her tight, he said harshly, "Don't say that. Don't even think it. _Ever_."

Shaking her head, she said, "I wouldn't have—I just knew I had lost a piece of me that I would never get back. That I would never be the same. I regretted all of the things I never told you and every minute of every day that I held myself back from you."

"Stephanie … sweetheart." He paused and swallowed audibly. Voice thick, he said, "You can't base a decision like this on regret."

Pulling back, she bracketed his face between her hands and stared into his eyes. "I already made my decision before you left."

His eyes clouded over a moment before he looked away from her. His grip on her bottom went slack, then fell away.

Shaking her head she reached for both of his hands and pulled them to her face. Placing a kiss on each scarred fist, she said, "Do you remember at the cemetery, after Mama Macaroni's funeral, how I cried?"

His expression was confused, his brows drawn together.

She went on. "You were quietly laughing at me, but you held me. I loved it when you held me like that. I still do. And then I asked you if I looked all blotchy. You told me, ' _Yes, but I love you anyway_.'"

He cringed a little, probably remembering the lovely qualifier he had tacked on. "Babe, I didn't mean—you were with Joe and-"

Dropping their joined hands in her lap, she shook her head again and said, "It's not that. It's … I asked you about being relationship material, the marrying kind. I wanted to know, needed to know if there was ever any chance for us.

"When you brought up the two guns and a knife, it made me sad. God, it made me sad. But I never really thought about the fact that when Joe talked about marriage, it scared me. It gave me hives. When I heard that there was no chance for you and me-"

"I said, _not any time soon,"_ he interjected _._ "Not no. Not never. Just … _not any time soon_."

Chin to her chest she whispered, "Oh God. You did." Her voice was laced with sadness and a little bit of anger at herself for not focusing on the right words. Looking up again, she said, "But I think my heart decided that day. Even if my mind couldn't believe it, my ears couldn't hear it and my eyes couldn't see it … my heart chose you."

Dropping her hands, he pulled her in, resting his forehead against her neck. He said, "I never wanted this kind of life for you. You deserve to have your freedom. You shouldn't have to live in fear. You shouldn't have to live in a gilded cage."

"I shouldn't have to live without you," she retorted.

"I didn't want to love you."

"Is that supposed to make me feel good?"

"I didn't want to love you, but I did. I do. You want to give _everything_ to the person you love. All I can see are the things our loving each other will take away from you. If I could go back and live my life differently, so I could give you a better life, a safe life, I would. God … I wish I could."

Shaking her head, Stephanie said, "You wouldn't be who you are now. _We_ wouldn't be who _we_ are now. Everything that you have done in your past has made you who you are. That's the man I fell in love with. You can't unilaterally decide that the price of loving me is too high and do some noble shit and walk away from me."

Ranger relaxed into the chair, laid his head against the back and closed his eyes. All of the tension in his body seemed to just melt away. Tipping forward in his lap, Stephanie placed a tender kiss just below his ear and whispered, "Do you love me enough?"

His arms wrapped around her tightly. Voice gruff, he said, "I love you too much."

He stood from the chair, bringing her with him. Stephanie instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist as he carried her to the bedroom. Once inside, he placed her on the center of the mattress and braced himself over her, just looking at her at her, studying every inch of her face as though seeing her for the first time.

She whispered, "Please kiss me."

Lowering his head, he brushed his lips across hers so gently it made her sigh. She opened her mouth and tried to force him to deepen the kiss before he was ready. Though he let her play some, he kept the pace slow and tentative. He brought his hands up to cradle her head and she felt an ache in her throat at the reverent gesture.

After long minutes, he slowly drew back and grasped her wrists, pulling her up so that they were kneeling, face-to-face. He slid his hands slowly up her thighs, caught the hem of her shirt and tugged it over her head.

She waited passively with her hands in her lap as he took in the sight before him. For once his eyes weren't swirling black pools of carnal lust; all she could see was love, adoration, and a tiny bit of awe. Leaning forward, he placed a soft kiss on her left nipple, then her right. Then he stood from the bed and peeled off his clothes, his eyes focused on her.

Once he stepped out of his cargos, Ranger crawled back onto the mattress and kneeled before her once again. He clasped her bottom where it rested on her heels and hauled her upright. Hooking his thumbs into the hips of her white cotton panties, he dragged them slowly down to her knees.

Then his hand was between her thighs, lightly stroking over her soft curls. Stephanie closed her eyes and bit back a moan, enjoying the ache of anticipation, the desire to be filled. Gnawing on her lower lip, she looked up at Ranger through her lashes and saw his eyes go dark as he watched himself stroke her cleft.

Stephanie whimpered out when he shifted his hand and entered her with one finger. With a twist of the wrist, he added another, and his thumb began rotating in maddeningly slow circles around her clit.

Her hips began to roll, her body swayed as she panted out, "Carlos, please."

Leaning down, he took her nipple in his mouth, and she grasped his shaft, stroked him firmly and glided her thumb across the slippery head. As he suckled her, he groaned against her breast, the vibrations sending an electric jolt straight between her legs.

Ranger pulled himself from her grasp and urged her to lie down. After tugging her panties completely off, he settled his shoulders between her legs and licked at the silky wetness glistening on her upper thighs.

Tunneling her fingers in his hair, she tried to pull him up. "I don't need…" she panted. "I just need you inside me. Please."

He caressed her thighs and pressed them wider. Spreading her with his thumbs, he gave her one long lick, then placed a soft kiss on her nub. "I'll never forgive myself for the way I took you the first time. You were meant to be loved thoroughly, meant to be tasted." At his words, she remembered his urgent ferocity when he took her that night so long ago. But in her mind, they took each other.

Tonguing softly at the apex of her sex, he paused a moment and said, "It's like I lost my mind. I had to be inside you. All I could think about was burying myself inside you."

She lifted her hips toward his face impatiently and he sipped, sucked and laved at her until she was moaning and begging. He took his time, using his fingers to tease her, stretch her, and push her to the edge. Stephanie looked down at the erotic sight of his beautiful mouth worshiping at her sex.

He was watching her too.

Placing a small bite on her inner thigh, he added another finger and said, "Once I tasted you, I knew I would never taste anything that sweet again. Every time I saw you, all I could think about was the way you moved beneath me, the way you tasted and the way you sounded when I made you come." He latched his lips around her clit once more, strumming with his tongue as his fingers rubbed deeply in just the right spot. Suddenly, her orgasm crashed over her and Stephanie blindly raked her nails along his shoulders, gasping out his name.

A moment later, Ranger was over her, gripping his shaft and stroking it along her slippery sex. She drew her knees to her chest and reached to clasp his hips and pull him inside. Dragging her nails across his ass, he growled and sheathed his cock in one sure thrust.

Holding himself above her, straight-armed, Ranger stared into her eyes as he glided within her, ground himself against her in a way that slowly drove her out of her mind. Minutes passed and both of their bodies were covered in a fine sheen of sweat, but Ranger showed no signs of tiring.

Stephanie ran her hands over the contours of his chest, flicked her nails across his small copper nipples. He hissed and shivered in response. She looked up and saw him watching her with both love and lust simmering in his eyes, his hair shimmering and dancing over her face in time with his thrusts. Running her fingers over his nipples once again, she gave each a slight pinch and Ranger rewarded her with a deep and powerful thrust, jolting against her womb. A small gasp of pain and pleasure slipped past her lips, but a moment later, she pinched again, then leaned up to suck and soothe the pain away.

Ranger dropped to his elbows, slid his hands under her back and clasped her shoulders, bracing her and giving himself the leverage he needed. With only that warning he began to pound into her fiercely until she was wild with it, moaning and gasping until she was hoarse from her cries for _more, harder, deeper_ … _I love you_. He released his grip on one shoulder and slipped a hand between them. In a few short strokes she was coming around him, shaking, shuddering, clasping around him. Lifting his hand from her, he grabbed roughly at her hair and kissed her savagely. She felt claimed, marked, owned. One more deep thrust, and he followed her over the edge, calling out her name and emptying himself within her.

…

Stephanie stepped out onto the porch the next morning, coffee in hand, finding Jase sitting in a rocking chair, staring off through the woods at the majestic cloud-haloed mountains. He looked at her silently as the screen door banged shut behind her. In one hand he clasped a Starbucks cup. Her Mensa phone rested on his thigh.

He switched his coffee to his left hand and handed her the phone. She looked down and saw the green light blinking again.

Furrowing her brow, she dropped onto a nearby bench and said, "I don't understand."

"I did a hard reset this morning."

"A what?"

"A hard reset. Sometimes when smart phones lock up, you have to reboot them."

"But this isn't a phone."

"Similar concept."

"Why didn't you do this initially?"

He set his cup on the porch floor near his feet and sat back. "I thought about doing it initially. But we still had his current location. We needed the current location so we could find…"

"His body. Okay. But you uploaded his current information to Tank. Once you did that, you could have reset it. God! I can't believe-"

"Stephanie, listen to me. When you do a hard reset, you risk losing information. And yes, we had his current location uploaded and saved. But there was a chance after a hard reset that we would lose the connection—permanently—to the tracker. What if they decided to move him? What if he wasn't really dead? I knew you would never move on unless you had closure either way. We needed to bring him back to you."

"But he was alive! I would have known-"

"We know that now. And I'm sorry you had to go through that. But would you have ever been able to forgive me if I hit that button and could never bring him home to you?"

Stephanie looked down into her coffee, her eyes burning with the threat of tears. Just then the screen door squeaked open again and Ranger came out. He was wearing a solid gray flannel shirt, completely unbuttoned, and faded jeans perched low on his narrow hips. His hair was loose and damp and his feet were bare. He looked from Stephanie to Jase, then down to the device gripped in her hand.

Heaving out a sigh, he set his coffee on the rail and sat on the bench behind Stephanie, pulling her back against his chest and laying a light kiss on the white bandage at the side of her neck. Plucking her coffee from her hand, he set it aside, then loosened her hold on the device. He studied it for a moment. "It appears I'm among the living once again." Tapping the screen a few times, he continued, "And holed up in my cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains." He shook his head minutely and said to Jase, "Artifact?"

Jase set his chair rocking and said, "Looks like it."

Craning her head around to look at Ranger, she said, "Artifact?"

He shrugged and said, "Like with a computer, when an image is static for too long it can burn into the screen. Only this wasn't burned into the screen. My last location just remained once the computer locked up." He turned back to Jase. "Did you try a hard reset?"

Jase shook his head in regret. "Not until this morning, man. I fucked up."

Ranger's arms tightened around Stephanie. "No, you did the right thing. You didn't know it was an artifact image. You could have lost connection with my frequency and had it not been an artifact, you wouldn't have any idea of where to find me. The risk outweighed the benefit."

"I'll do better next time," Jase vowed.

Stephanie involuntarily flinched at the mention of _next time_ , causing Ranger to stiffen. She relaxed against him a moment later and turned her head to kiss his bicep. "I'm sorry. I just got through _this time_. It's going to take me a few days to … I'll do better next time, too."

Clasping one of her hands in his, Ranger said, "I just got off the phone with Tank. He's relieved, to say the least. I told him and the guys to take a few days of R&R as long as they were already in Mexico. My treat. We need to get in touch with Micah."

"I already put in a call."

Stephanie asked, "Who's Micah?"

Leaning over to set the device down, Ranger said, "Our unauthorized equipment dealer." To Jase, he said, "Ask him if the devices can be altered so each tracker is linked with two handhelds. Better yet, ask him if he can set it up so each implant is actually two individual trackers both set to the same frequency to both handheld devices. That way we have two backups."

Jase nodded. "On it. I also worked out some specs on a communication relay system for your team. Nothing set in stone, I just roughed something out last night."

Stephanie felt Ranger's head nod above hers. "Thanks. I'll take a look at it." The three were silent for a while as they took in the glorious mountain scenery, as stunning as a painting, the crisp, fresh air scented with wood smoke, and the rustle of wildlife scampering through years of fallen leaves.

Clearing his throat, Ranger said, "I owe you a debt of thanks, Jase. And an apology."

"No you don't."

"Yeah … I think I do."

Jase looked over at Stephanie, cocooned in her lover's protective arms, then up at Ranger. Then he looked off to the side, away from them and said, "No price, man. Ever. For either of you."

Stephanie felt an ache burn deep in her throat. To her ears, Jase had as good as told Ranger that he loved them. That he'd die for them. And she knew that he didn't say it out of tradition or duty. He said it because he meant it.

Jase stood quickly after bending to pick up his coffee. "I've been cleared to leave the state, so I think I'm gonna head out now."

Setting her hands on Ranger's thighs, Stephanie pushed up and walked over to Jase. She hesitated only a moment before wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head against his chest. She whispered, "I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I'll miss you."

He had been stiff when she first embraced him, but at her words, he brought his arms around her shoulders and laid a kiss on the top of her head.

"Yeah, uh … yeah." He cleared his throat. "Can you do me a favor?"

She nodded against his chest.

"The next time I see you, can it be for Thanksgiving or some shit like that? You're really not the best hostess when you're in bunker mode."

She burbled a laugh into his chest and nodded, wiped at her eyes.

Jase pulled back and cleared his throat again before stepping around Stephanie and making his way to Ranger who had stood as they'd said their goodbyes.

The men stood awkwardly facing one other. Each had his hands in his pockets. They said nothing, just looked each other in the eye and said a million things to each other without saying a single word.

 _I can never repay you._

 _You never have to. You would do the same for me. And I'll do it again if I have to._

 _You shouldn't have to. You deserve to have your own life. Five years is a long time._

 _I can't do that shit again._

 _You're lying. And you're already half in love with Stephanie._

 _Fuck you. Like anyone can help it._

 _If something happens to me…_

 _Yeah, yeah. I'll take care of your girl._

 _But as long as I'm alive, I'd prefer it if you didn't…_

 _I hear you, brother._

Jase dropped his gaze first and held out his fist for a complicated knuckle-bump, hand slap/handshake that defied Stephanie. Ranger pulled him in for a strong hug that the two men held for a moment. Then came the masculine backslaps. And then Jase walked away.

They watched Jase reverse slowly down the drive. Once he was finished reversing, he changed gears and looked up at the porch. He and Ranger exchanged crisp salutes, then Jase hit the gas and was gone.

Ranger came up behind Stephanie and wrapped his arms around her waist. With his chin resting on the top of her head, he said, "I can make you breakfast if you want. Or we can go into town to eat and do some shopping. We also need to get your statement out of the way. If you just want to get back to Trenton when you're done, we can do that."

She turned in his arms and looked up at his face. "Can we stay here for a few days?"

He nodded his head once.

"Is this the Batcave?"

The right side of his mouth tipped up a fraction as he shook his head slowly.

"Is there really a Batcave?"

"Babe."

"I mean … I assume you're going to take me home. Your home. Our home. After all that talk about you taking care of me and protecting me, and keeping in mind that I'm overlooking the whole _belonging to you fully_ thing," she chanced a glance up at him with a cautious smile, "I was kind of wondering where the Batcave is. Where my home is."

He took her hand, lifted it to his mouth and placed a kiss in the center of her palm. Then he brought it to his chest and set it against his heart. "Babe. It's always been right here."

 ** _The End~_**


End file.
